When Paul Gauguin met Teha'amana (also called Tehura), she was 13 and he was 48. They had a daughter that lived only few days a year later.
Even though writer/director Edouard Deluc read all of Gauguin's writings and biographies, he chose to focus on certain things and romanticize others. For instance, while Tehura looks young (the actress playing her was 17 years old at the time), in real life she was 13, and Gauguin was 43, which would have made their relationship illegal in mainland France at the time. Other troubling facts were omitted: while on the island, Gauguin had syphilis (a sexually transmissible and potentially deadly disease) and not diabetes as shown in the movie, he also had sexual relations with two 14 years old girls (Pau'ura and Vaeoho) and a young prostitute, and the big romance story around which the movie is built seems to be purely fictional, as Gauguin never mentioned romantic feelings for Tehura.
On top of all that, Gauguin is seen admonishing a young Tahitian man for copying the same statue over and over again, but Gauguin was the one copying the Polynesian art.
All of this lead several media to severely criticize the movie for its lack of care, one article on Jeune Afrique even went as far as being titled "Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti, where pedophilia is less serious in the tropics".
Writer/director Edouard Deluc first read "Noa Noa", Gauguin's travel diary during his Polynesian stay, during his studies, and always had the idea for a movie adaptation in the back of his head. In 2012, he read "The Moon and Sixpence" by William Somerset Maugham, inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin, and fell back into Gauguin's world, reread all he could on the topic and got motivated to make this movie after all.
Tuheï Adams, who plays Tehura, was found during the second day of casting. As of 2021, this is her only movie acting credit.
To portray Gauguin convincingly, Vincent Cassel read "Noa Noa", went to the Musée d'Orsay to see Gauguin's sculptures and paintings with Edouard Deluc, lost weight, as at this point in his life, Gauguin mostly ate breadfruit roots, asked for false teeth and even got painting and sculpting classes.