A Good Year (2006) Stopping to Smell the Vintner's Bouquet

A Good Year (2006)

November 10, 2006 Stopping to Smell the Vintner’s Bouquet

By STEPHEN HOLDEN Published: November 10, 2006

“A Good Year,” an innocuous, feel-good movie that reunites Russell Crowe with the director Ridley Scott, is a far cry from the triumphant metallic stomp of “Gladiator,” their previous collaboration. A sun-dappled romantic diversion, which one British critic has already dismissed as “tourist gastro-porn,” “A Good Year” is a three-P movie: pleasant, pretty and predictable. One might add piddling.

If nothing else, this celebration of French food and wine, adapted from Peter Mayle’s 2004 novel, will whet an appetite for consuming “the nectar that is incapable of lying,” as the film’s dissipated philosopher of epicurean delights calls the product of his estate in Provence. Viewers are advised to make a reservation at an upscale French restaurant immediately after seeing the film or risk going home feeling deprived.

For Mr. Crowe, whose public image took a hit last year when he threw a telephone at a desk clerk in a New York hotel and later pleaded guilty to assault, “A Good Year” looks like a calculated charm offensive by an actor not known for his courtly manners. His character, Max Skinner, a ferociously aggressive London bond trader who inherits a small vineyard from his Uncle Henry (Albert Finney) and quickly mellows into a rich, happy, bon vivant, is the sort of role usually taken by Hugh Grant.

Mr. Crowe, estimable actor that he is, gives what may be his cheeriest screen performance. But is he charming? Let’s just say that both Grants (Hugh and the ghost of Cary) can rest comfortably. Mr. Crowe is not unlikable. But as for visceral charm, there are only flashes here and there.

For Mr. Scott “A Good Year” is one of his periodic palate cleansers. Amid his outpouring of would-be blockbusters — “Gladiator,” “Hannibal,” “Black Hawk Down” and “Kingdom of Heaven” — all released since 2000, only one other film, “Matchstick Men,” qualifies as a breather from a schedule that suggests the directorial equivalent of training for a heavyweight bout.

The blandness of “A Good Year” isn’t the fault of Mr. Scott, who pumps the film full of visual energy and gorgeous scenery, but of its screenwriter, Marc Klein (“Serendipity”). You keep waiting for some witty banter, but except for scattered remarks and Max’s slapstick tumble into an empty swimming pool, there isn’t much comedy. The inevitable romance, when it arrives in the person of a French bistro owner, Fanny (Marion Cotillard), whom he covets at first sight, is a half-baked affair in which her chilly resistance thaws faster than ice cream in a microwave.

The movie begins, in its own coy language, “a few vintages ago” with a scene of Max as a boy (Freddie Highmore) frolicking on the estate of his snobbish, bibulous uncle. As this old man dispenses sartorial advice to his nephew, the cocky wunderkind beats him at chess. The story then shoots ahead “many vintages later” to catch the grown-up Max, now a preening Master of the Universe, as he spits fire in his London brokerage house and leads his “lab rats,” as he calls his troops, in an unscrupulous maneuver that nets his company tens of millions of dollars.

Word arrives that Max’s once-beloved Uncle Henry, with whom he lost touch years earlier, has died, leaving no will. As his uncle’s closest surviving relative, Max stands to inherit the estate, La Siroque, which he visits, determined to make a quick sale based on the advice of his best friend, Charlie Willis (Tom Hollander), a London real-estate agent. But once he arrives in France where the sun is brighter, the grapes tastier and the women more pliable, ooh la la! Before the property can be sold, it needs repairs, especially the tennis court, and he lingers there and begins to rediscover the simple pleasures of those halcyon childhood summers.

But even in paradise Max is prickly and insensitive. He repeatedly tramples on the feelings of his uncle’s winemaker (Didier Bourdon) and shouts “Lance Armstrong!” while driving past a group of French cyclists. Nice guy.

Out of the blue a young woman from California, Christie Roberts (Abbie Cornish), shows up and announces she is Uncle Henry’s illegitimate daughter. If her claim is true, she, not Max, would get La Siroque, whose value suddenly diminishes after a wine-growing expert tests the vines and pronounces restoration of the vineyard to its former glory impossible.

With two pretty women lurking around the premises, you might expect a rivalry to develop, but the movie barely considers the possibility. Failing that, you might expect Max and Christie to wage a cutthroat battle for ownership of the estate. But Christie, an oenophile from Napa Valley, is primarily interested in knowing more about her father. Ms. Cornish (the young Australian actress who was so gripping in “Somersault”) exudes a palpable discomfort in her confusing, underwritten role.

“A Good Year” is the movie equivalent of poring over a glossy brochure for a luxury vacation you could never afford while a roughneck salesman (Mr. Crowe) who imagines he has class harangues you to hurry up and make a decision about taking the tour. My advice is to resist the pitch.

The movie is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some strong language and one mild sex scene.

Directed by Ridley Scott; written by Marc Klein, based on the novel by Peter Mayle; director of photography, Philippe Le Sourd; edited by Dody Dorn; music by Marc Streitenfeld; production designer, Sonja Klaus; produced by Mr. Scott; released by Fox 2000 Pictures. Running time: 117 minutes.

WITH: Russell Crowe (Max Skinner), Albert Finney (Uncle Henry), Marion Cotillard (Fanny), Abbie Cornish (Christie Roberts), Tom Hollander (Charlie Willis), Freddie Highmore (Young Max) and Didier Bourdon (Francis Duflot).