Old Money Savoir Faire: This Is Worth It (Film Review)

So I just had the opportunity - on account of knowing some artsy friends who arrive and disappear at any moment too - to watch the film 'Widow Clicquot' at the main cinema in the city here.

There was zero fanfare, none of the regular wine merchant displays that often accompany much lesser movies. There is a very fine little wine bar in the place, away from the main ticketing area which also has a bar and pretty good small food offerings. This more private bar is right at the heart of the cross-roads as it were, to all of the main theaters including the so-called 'Platinum Club' experience theatrette (which is very nice and tends to show off-the-beaten-trail Euro flicks, and so that's pretty cool).

Where are we going today,
Calvin. Take us...

The smallish theater for this movie was virtually at capacity, all older people, very middle class-ish (I am a complete snob about that; prefer the company of peasants, frankly).

On the one hand on agreeing to go see this I was skeptical because I haven't seen a good new movie in years, yet on the other hand I thought, well, how wrong are they going to be able to get the history of an icon...?

'Widow Clicquot' of course refers to the woman who started the great Champagne House of Veuve Clicquot.

...And, to ease my typical early disquiet, I was quite ready to pounce at falsity and denounce this as just another one of the lunatic propaganda pieces from the same tribe of movie-making idiots who have captured the scene in recent times - if for no other reason than that I have always liked this brand of Champagne. At one point someone (someone important actually, now that I come to think about it) in their marketing people actually announced me 'an ambassador of the House of Veuve Clicquot;' I'm not sure but I think it was around the time when I used to get invited to Arthur Andersen shows and Whatsisname Brandson would be around them.

So anyway I was ready to denounce this thing though at the same time being an actual idiot movie-lover (not an idiot for commercial reasons alone) and an eternal optimist, I began to watch with hope and an open mind because I do like to see other people's opinions too.

The thing starts, ten seconds in I could not see the stars as obviously immediately beautiful or memorable but instead rather neutral - young faces to me at least: unknowns.

I had no knowledge from the opening titles (and these were tightly-framed and sparse) who the producers were, or what the money was behind the film.

The Imperial Russians in Paris, see.

Turns out, later when I looked into it, this was made by none other than literally the William Morris Agency (or Group or whoever they call themselves now, but this is the serious entertainment agency and money of yore).

Maybe three minutes in - I was going to say five, but I think it's actually closer to three - I was close to tears, not necessarily because the dramatic action (in the sense of story-line, right, not 'action' action) was evoking it but because I sensed where this should be going, if true to the reality, both of wine-making broadly, and this history particularly.

My grandfather made wine, my grandmother made wine and sold it, my mother made wine and sold it... I do none of those things.

But they did do.

Twenty minutes in and I'm going 'don't let me down.'

Thirty minutes in I've forgotten about my prejudices and doubts and the production values, directing and ensemble cast have erased my doubts and fears and I have complete confidence in them - and now I'm just going with the story.

This thing is tightly and seamlessly edited, there are no flat-spots or faltering parts, and the necessary seeming emotional bathos is not jarring and becomes almost a gothic element in the artistic sense.

But not so as anyone unschooled would notice it either.

I don't think anyone in the audience got the movie at all on the levels at which it was operating.

When one of the major characters said to the female lead's character (which is of course Barbe-Nicole, Madame Clcquot) 'Ah, I see that you are a criminal at heart,' I nearly clapped out loud but noticed no one else was rising to the point. Or worse yet to the spirit of the whole story-line and the style of its protagonist.

A little criminal enterprise.

Madame Clcquot was proposing to evade or break the embargo demanded by Napoleon by secretly diverting a new shipment to Amsterdam and from thence into Imperial Russia (therefore a criminal, you see, by Napoleonic decrees).

Anyway, to cut a long story short for you (however, the movie is not long; it's very short by today's standards), this is certainly one of the best movies ever made of all time.

There you are.

The end.

Not quite the end.

When the lights came on, and everyone went out, I did clap, no one else did and some of the more audible comments were from women on the arms of their very average husbands, were of this sort: 'It's a man's world, isn't it.'

Totally not the message of the movie at all, and nothing like what its ending implied although superficially the key ending scene is before a legal tribunal where Clicquot was being examined or charged with impropriety by some in-laws and competing wine-makers - apparently for running a business and a winery as an unwed female with outside romantic liaisons or somethings, it's not well-defined in the movie.

Not well-defined yes, but this is because of the tight editing making the obvious to the old saws perfectly well signaled -, what is thus inobvious to everyone else: namely, that the Widow Clcquot has a love relationship with a house-maid, and a sex relationship with the lair who is her select and brilliant trade merchant and representative to the Imperial Russian Court (means aristocracy and its social gatherings, yes?).

It's almost like 'As Good As It Gets' which no one understands is about the fact that the Nicholson character is the guy who robs all of the young artists that he 'arranges accommodation' for when they come to New York, and that is how he makes his money, not by writing books, which his secretaries do, and is merely a front for what he really does - I have not seen that explanation anywhere even by skilled and experienced film reviewers, but once you have been told it, you can never see the same movie again and fail to realize it!

Everyone else thinks the Nicholson movie is about some mature female finally getting with a grumpy old - quite detestable - man.

Now mind you, this is not an excuse - this movie isn't - an excuse for going out and getting silly drunk, okay.

If anything, it's a way of never getting drunk frivolously ever again. Instead, if you simply have to imbibe, then it will be all about the experience, all about life, the vines, the earth -, and the stars...