The last time I remember mentioning Niki Caro’s The Vintner’s Luck was August 2009 when I previewed a few titles playing at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. The film played the fest and was ultimately forgotten.
Mike Goodridge at Screen Daily said it fell “midway between absurd and engrossing, misjudged and intelligent.”
And Justin Chang at Variety said, “It’s one of those ambitious grand-summation works — rooted in the bittersweet truism that life, like wine, grows richer with age — but not even Caro’s earthy, sensuous filmmaking can overcome the tale’s glib supernatural conceit, overstated moral lessons and overall dramatic torpor.”
Based on Elizabeth Knox’s bestselling novel, The Vintner’s Luck is set in early 19th century France and tells the story of Sobran Jodeau (Jeremie Renier), a young peasant winemaker and the three loves of his life–his wife Celeste (Keisha Castle-Hughes), the baroness Aurora de Valday (Vera Farmiga) and Xas (Gaspard Ulliel), an angel who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Sobran. A fantastical creature with wings that smell of snow (what does snow smell like?), Xas turns out to be an unconventional mentor. Under his guidance Sobran is forced to fathom the nature of love and belief and in the process, grapples with the sensual, the sacred and the profane–all in pursuit of the perfect vintage.
The trailer for the film has just debuted as Panorama Entertainment is set to release it on May 6 in what I can only imagine will be a couple theaters in New York and Los Angeles before shuffling it off to DVD. It did just win Best Period Drama at the Sedona Film Festival, but I can’t say that really means too much.
If you’re interested, the trailer is directly below and I have a few images from the film right here.
