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.
© James Travers 2015
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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...?
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.