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Easy drinking
Nils van der Linden
Posted Fri, 24 Nov 2006
There’s a bit more to making a good wine than fermenting grapes grown in a Provencal vineyard. And there’s a bit more to making a good film than re-teaming an Oscar-winning actor with the director of his biggest film.
Even if you’re Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott. Although they deserve some credit for not coming up with something like ‘Gladiator 2: The Beginning’, the pair should have considered their second collaboration a little more carefully.
The Oscar-winning actor is best at playing intense, troubled characters; the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ director is most comfortable making grand epics featuring casts of thousands — and at least three elaborate battle scenes.
So why choose a light and frothy story about a London-based investment broker who inherits his uncle’s farm in Provence and, finally, decides he quite likes lazing about quaffing wine and chatting up French beauties in picture postcard Provence? Sure, there’s no reason why Crowe and Scott can’t try out something a little different. After all, as somebody somewhere once said, a change is as good as a holiday.
But the impression you get from ‘A Good Year’ is they were only thinking about the holiday: spend a couple of months soaking up the sun in the French countryside; oh, and make a movie somewhere along the line.
That’s not entirely fair though. It’s pretty obvious that both the director and his star are working incredibly hard to make their movie seem as effortless as the Peter Mayle book on which it’s based. But try as they might, neither Crowe’s overly casual broker turned romantic nor Scott’s attempts at staging comic pratfalls are convincing enough to create the sweet, innocent little film this could have been.
In theory it could have worked — an actor and director out of their comfort zones telling a fish out of water story about a man finding himself, finding a meaning to life, finding love. What’s more, the screenplay is by a New Yorker who knew nothing about wine or Provence before getting the job.
But in practise, it may have been a step too far for all involved. Mayle’s books are more about the atmosphere and the mood he creates than the narrative, so screenwriter Marc Klein (‘Serendipity’) doesn’t have all that much plot to work with. He’s good at dropping in a few sharp rom-com jokes but struggles to tie up the practically insignificant plot strands involving an American girl who could be Max-the-investment-shark’s cousin, the farm’s walking-French-cliché vintner, or the mysterious presence of highly sought after wine in uncle’s cellar.
At least the story’s main thrust, as it were — the relationship between Crowe’s character and the gorgeous but feisty owner of a local restaurant — gets the attention it deserves, but still there’s an overwhelming sense of predictability that sets in after, oh, 10 minutes.
Klein’s shortcomings are camouflaged somewhat by the expected visual splendour of Scott’s cinematography, which does a lot to capture the world of Mayle’s book. Of course it helps a little that the British director has his own winefarm in Provence and inspired his author friend to come up with the story. But, then again, that just adds to the air of self-indulgence tainting a film that’s as sweet as a cheap Port.
And with less body than a grape juice, ‘A Good Year’ may be easy-drinking stuff, but it’s certainly not Scott and Crowe’s best vintage.
