A spoiled vintage

Alexander Payne's 2004 film Sideways successfully married celluloid and wine, and found a large, appreciative audience among both cinephiles and oenophiles (though vintners of Merlot were less enthralled). Superior vintage gave way to plonk with Ridley Scott's A Good Year, a not very good bottling of Russell Crowe in a romantic comedy.

The latest Hollywood film hoping to cash in on this niche market, Bottle Shock, falls somewhere between these two films, like a supermarket rosé straddling a shelf of reds and whites: There are a few good elements, but it's nothing memorable.

Based on a true story, Bottle Shock fancifully recounts a competition held in France in 1976, where Napa Valley wines from California were pitted against well-known French wines in a blind taste-testing. The result of this contest would come to upset many prejudices the wine world over.

The idea for the competition came from a British expat sommelier, Steven Spurrier, who ran a flagging wine shop in Paris (incidentally, Spurrier has been anything but elated with the final cut of Bottle Shock). Failing to make a real name for himself, he decided on a trek to Northern California to see if the reports about that region's wines had any validity.

In the '70s, California wines were still easy for connoisseurs to dismiss, as neither Napa's bottles nor European oenophiles traveled very far. And so ignorance of Napa's quality could be cherished as a virtue - a mark of good taste. Even blessed with curiosity, Spurrier would arrive in Napa Valley with many of his own preconceived ideas, only to be pleasantly shocked by what he found.

In Randall Miller's film, Spurrier (marvelously played by Alan Rickman), arrives in Calistoga, California (where an even rarer American product, bottled water, was produced), to discover cabernets and chardonnays of surprising worth.

In his tailored polyester suits, Spurrier makes his presence known to the laid-back locals, many of whom look upon him as a benign snob, which, indeed, he is. Still, the idea that this cartoon of British hauteur may be taking their wines seriously appeals to their sense of marketing. Most of the local winemakers are only too happy to have him raid their cellars.

The exception is Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman), the owner of Chateau Montelena. Though struggling with trying to create a name for his chardonnay, Barrett is openly weary of Spurrier. "Why don't I like you?" Barrett asks Spurrier point-blank. "Because you think I'm an arsehole," Rickman's character replies with utter suavity. "And I'm not, really. I'm just British, and, well, you're not."

Barrett has greater concerns than an Englishman nosing about his vineyard. He's dangerously in hock with the local bank, for one, leaving him one bad vintage away from losing everything. Added to that, his stoner son Bo (Chris Pine) has dropped out of university, and is using Chateau Montelena as his pit-stop between surfing safaris and various convenient young women's bedrooms.

In any present-day conversation about contemporary American cinema raiding Hollywood's '70s larder, Bottle Shock must be included. One of the few successes of Miller's film is that he's fully structured and framed it like a product of that superior decade. This is aided by cinematographer Mike Ozler's balance between Polaroid-diffuse lighting and shadowy interior shots. Miller even provides a Russ Meyer-esque scene of a wet young woman washing down some equipment, to the slack-jawed thrill of some workmen. The soundtrack, in its annoying repetitiveness, also seems to have been lifted from the archives.

Yet Bottle Shock goes flat in its attempt to cover far too many secondary stories. The most successful of these is the relationship Rickman's Spurrier has with his expat American friend Maurice (Dennis Farina in fine form) in Paris. Far less formed is a love triangle between Pine's Bo, his father's intern Sam (Rachel Taylor) and Bo's Mexican-American chum Gustavo (Freddy Rodriguez). In fact, Bo finally winning Sam over Gustavo leaves not only a sour taste, but much in the region's Anglo-Hispanic dynamic unexplored.

The performances range from adequate to good, particularly Pullman, Farina and Rodriguez (though this fine actor is lumbered with the dregs of the film's dialogue). Still, the film belongs to Rickman's arch toff, Spurrier, and there are memorable scenes, including his character discovering the joys of guacamole and tortilla chips, after looking askance at an offering as if he were being presented with the by-product of a baby (his equally mystifying encounter with a bucket of the Colonel's finest extra-crispy, however, never loses its horror for him). Rickman corners all the good lines, as well.

Nonetheless, the real story, the "Judgment of Paris," is lost in the rather clichéd family drama between father and son Barretts (from wine to whine). Had director Miller opened Spurrier's story instead, the evening would have probably been more sparkling.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at
ssilvis@praguepost.com