Premiers crus (2015)
Directed by Jérôme Le Gris

Film Review

Having dismayed the critics with his stylised thriller Requiem pour une tueuse (2011), director Jérôme Le Maire goes on the charm offensive in a big way with his second feature, apparently unaware of the fact that all he is serving up is a diluted soapy version of Gilles Legrand's Tu seras mon fils (2011).  The similarities between the two films are more apparent than their differences, both dealing with an estranged son's attempts to prove himself worthy to inherit a family wine business in a picturesque region of France.  Legrand's film is far from perfect but it has the virtue of tackling its formulaic subject with sincerity and a surprising bleakness of tone.  By contrast, Le Maire's film is a shallow retread that offers nothing new - just an accumulation of tatty old clichés put together with tender loving care and a total lack of imagination.

Premiers crus has all the ingredients that would make it appeal to a mainstream French audience and, breathtakingly unoriginal though it is, the film is not unpleasing to sit through.  There's enough flair visible in the acting and photography to make up for the flagrant shortcomings on the writing and directing fronts, and had this been made as a television series it would probably have gone down somewhat better.  It's hard to believe the film was co-scripted by Rémi Bezançon, whose own films - which include the hit Le Premier jour du reste de ta vie (2008) - are distinguished by their quirkiness and perceptiveness of family relations.  Bezançon and Le Maire's script isn't just lacking in narrative terms (the plot is basically just a lazy cut-and-paste job), it also drips with some of the most laughably bad dialogue you can imagine in a supposedly grown-up drama.  How the actors managed to complete some of their sentences without dying of shame or creasing into hysterics is a complete mystery - one suspects nifty editing might have been involved.

The best cure for a bad script is a great cast, and in this at least Premiers crus doesn't sour the palate.  Jalil Lespert is the perfect casting choice for the role of the errant son who returns to save his father's ailing business, having spent the last few years terrorising wine growers across France with his good wine guide.  It's a return to the kind of role (a marginalised character trying to prove himself against all the odds) in which Lespert excels and from which he has excluded himself in recent years whilst pursuing a promising career as a director - most recently on his biopic Yves Saint-Laurent (2014) and the television mini-series Versailles (2015).

Playing Lespert's far from encouraging father is another well thought of actor, Gérard Lanvin, who brings a much needed gravitas to the film that otherwise risks being dramatically feeble.  Most of the emphasis is placed on the two main male characters, with the result that the two female members of the principal cast - Alice Taglioni and Laura Smet - are criminally under-utilised.  This is a shame as the one part of the film that rings true is the gradually developing relationship between Lespert and Taglioni's characters, which deserves much greater prominence in a plot that badly need something solid to hold on to as it burns its way through a stack of recycled story ideas.  Superficially engaging but painfully lacking in substance, Premiers crus only serves to remind us that 2015 is far from being a vintage year for French cinema.

Film Synopsis

Ever since the late 18th century, the Maréchals have been running one of the most successful winegrowing enterprises in Burgundy.  Their Côte-d'Or vineyard has been a hallmark of quality, but in recent years its present owner, François Maréchal, has struggled to make it pay.  Meanwhile his son Charles has moved to Paris to pursue a very successful career as a wine critic and author of several influential wine guides.  Hearing that his father is on the brink of ruin, Charles returns to Burgundy in the hope that he can help save the ailing family business.

François is grateful for his son's well-meaning support but is sceptical that he will succeed.  It takes many years of experience and dedication to become a successful viticulturist and it isn't clear whether Charles has the commitment necessary to succeed where his father has failed.  The wildly unpredictable weather doesn't exactly help matters, but Charles perseveres, in spite of - or perhaps encouraged by - his father's lack of faith in him.  He certainly has a taste for good wine, but does he have what it takes to produce it...?