Starring: Russell Crowe and Marion Cotillard
Director: Ridley Scott
Rated: M
A GOOD Year is a rather light drama with touches of comedy and romance.
It is not the kind of film where audiences expect to see Russell Crowe.
A strong and imposing screen presence, he is usually in heavyweight dramas like Gladiator, Master and Commander and last year’s Cinderella Man.
However, this time he joins with his Gladiator director, Ridley Scott, and tries to interpret his character, Max, in the Cary Grant vein, some serious moments, a pair of glasses, some slapstick pratfalls in a swimming pool, some repartee.
It doesn’t quite come off but he does his best very earnestly.
The scene is set before the adult Max appears, when we see his character as a young boy staying with his Uncle Henry in Provence, France, during the summer holidays.
Henry (played with gusto by Albert Finney) is a genial, rakish man who loves his vineyards and is proud of his wine – and proud of his nephew who seems to be ready to follow in his footsteps.
Cut to the present and the London stock exchange and Max has become a ruthless high flyer, tightly controlling his staff to buy and sell for almost obscene profit at just the right moment.
We wonder what has happened to the nice boy of those summer holidays (although we remember that he did cheat at chess and his uncle gave him a parable about telling the truth).
Then comes the news that Henry has died and he must go to France to sort out the will.
Meanwhile, Max has everything under control and plans to sell off the rundown property with the aid of his lawyer friend (Tom Hollander).
While on his mobile phone and driving, he does not realise that he has run a local restaurant owner, Fanny Chenal (Marion Cotillard), off the road.
His friends, who have managed the winery for decades, are anxious to stay on.
One does not have to have the gift of prophecy to anticipate what happens, although there is definitely one unforeseen occurrence.
Henry’s American daughter (a vivacious Abbie Cornish), whom nobody knew of, suddenly turns up. However, it is following through the predictable that is enjoyable.
In the early 1990s there was a spate of films with the theme, if we take the Gospel’s phrasing, “what does it profit to gain the whole world and lose one’s soul?”
There was The Doctor with William Hurt. There was The Fisher King with Jeff Bridges and Regarding Henry with Harrison Ford.
These were star vehicles for actors portraying professional men (doctors, radio personalities, lawyers) who experienced a personal crisis and realised that they had become over-achieving rats in the rat race. They had to examine their consciences and their way of life.
And so Max starts to remember, to allow the influence of his uncle and of the Provence countryside to permeate his whole being, so that there is nothing else to do but to renounce his ambition and greed, embrace the land – and embrace Fanny Chenal.
