> The Vintner's Luck
Director: Niki Caro
Cast: Jeremie Renier, Gaspard Ulliel, Vera Farmiga, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Patrice Valota, Vania Vilers, Lizzy Brochere.
Rating: (R16)
3 stars (out of 5)
Reviewed by Christine Powley
It is a cliche that authors are thrilled to sell the film rights to their books, then devastated when they see the eventual movie.
When you watch a film adaptation, you normally see it from the writer's perspective, but every so often you sympathise with the film-makers, if the author has come up with such a fantastical tale that no-one could successfully film it.
The Vintner's Luck (Rialto) is such a movie. Director Niki Caro has taken Elizabeth Knox's novel of the love affair between an 18th-century French winemaker and an angel and for some reason decided that the most cinematic aspect is the wine-making.
When Sobran (Jeremie Renier) and Xas (Gaspard Ulliel) have their moonlit rendezvous, according to Caro, the purpose is just a heavenly wine tutorial. Well, two men sitting in the dark talking about the science of wine-making in thick French accents is not what I go to the movies for.
The two male leads are French speakers, so saying "zes" and "zat" comes naturally to them, but poor old Keisha Castle-Hughes as Sobran's wife Celeste is forced into an Inspector Clouseau accent as well.
Fortunately, things improve when we go out into the sunny fields making the wine of a lifetime. In the end, The Vintner's Luck is a noble experiment that probably should never have been attempted.
Best thing: When we move to Sobran's relationship with his patron, the Baroness, things pick up, as at least they are filmed in daylight.
Worst thing: What people loved about Knox's novel was Xas the angel. He makes almost no impression on the film, as if Caro found it all too hard.
See it with: A party of women, as this is a film on which the sexes will never agree.
