Michael's Movie Grade: C
A beautiful looking but standard Biopic.
This film tells the story of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot, a woman who inherited a wine vineyard from her deceased husband and turned it into one of the most successful wine vineyards in the world.
This is an incredible looking movie. Nearly every scene in this film is visually beautiful to look at. Shot on location in France, this movie perfectly captures the beauty of the French countryside in a way that makes us feel like we are taking a trip there ourselves. This film also uses some very creative storytelling devices as it cuts back and forth between her running the wine business with scenes of her earlier marriage. It is also very clever how at first these flashbacks show this marriage as perfectly idyllic while later flashbacks show that it was often anything but. This works especially well as she develops a new romance later in the film. The movie also benefits from a great performance from Haley Bennett, who adds a lot of humanity to this underwritten character.
However, even with all the elements in its favor, this is a very standard biopic. There is nothing about the storyline that we have seen in a million movies before this. These is your typical someone people doubted proves themselves by being very successful despite all odds movie. Our main character is fierce, independent and determined. This makes it easy for us to admire her. What is hard though is relating to her. Despite these elements and details of her romantic life, we never really get to know who she is as a person. This movie also suffers from a 90-minute runtime. With this brief of a runtime, we are not allowed to get to know who any of these characters really are as the story often jumps from plot point to plot point.
While there is enough to enjoy this movie, there is little doubt that you will forget about it a month or so.
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