Back To Burgundy(2017)
Back To Burgundy(2017) - https://urluso.com/2tFTQZ
Three siblings from Burgundy have to find a way to reconnect with one another when their father falls ill. Jean, Juliette and Jérémie were all trained in the art of winegrowing and production by a father made out to be dominant and controlling. Jérémie (who married locally) and Juliette stayed close to the vineyards in adult life, but Jean left, backpacking around the world and working in the wine industry in Chile, where he met his girlfriend Alicia, and finally buying a vineyard with her in Australia. He missed the death of his mother in France, in part because his son was being born on the same day in Australia. He returns to France 10 years after his departure, as his father is ailing (he dies soon after), with mixed feelings. The plot revolves around his coming to terms with the past, his father, and his relationship with Alicia.
In "Red Obsession," a documentary about the wine industry in France's Bourdeaux region, Francis Ford Coppola describes drinking a glass of wine that had been bottled four years after the French Revolution. "Wine tells a story," says Coppola, who wonders if Thomas Jefferson or the Marquis de Lafayette had had a glass of the same wine. The story-telling power of wine is the context of Cédric Klapisch's "Back to Burgundy," a film detailing a year in the life of a fictional wine-making family in Burgundy. The taste of the family wines propel the characters back into the past, wrinkling up time for the characters. "Back to Burgundy" has a gentle low-stakes mood (although the actual stakes are often quite high), and the script (also by Klapisch) is episodic in structure. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. When the film focuses on the wine-making process, in the progression from vine to bottle, it's a fascinating and detailed look at a very specific subculture.
When his father becomes ill, Jean (Pio Marmaï) returns home to the family vineyard in France after 10 years abroad. There has been little to no contact between Jean and his two siblings, Juliette (Ana Girardot) and Jérémie (François Civil). When their father dies, the siblings must make some serious decisions about the family business. Unable to pay the huge inheritance tax, they consider their options. They could sell the vineyard to pay the tax. They could rent out part of it. Jérémie has married into another wine-making family, and it's expected he will step up to be a partner in his father-in-law's business. Jean, with a girlfriend and son back in Australia, has no intention of staying in France. That leaves Juliette. It's now up to her to make the decisions for the upcoming harvest, and she doesn't have her father to consult.
When Jean, Juliette and Jérémie were children, their father would blindfold them and make them taste the family wines, quizzing them. "Behind the lemon, is there another fruit?" he asks. Juliette was always the best at this game. Their dead father (Éric Caravaca) haunts the film, in flashbacks but also sometimes literally. Jean converses and argues with the ghost of his dead father, similar to how the ghost of the father was used in HBO's "Six Feet Under." Like Jean, Nate in "Six Feet Under" is the son who left, who refused the father's legacy. But unlike "Six Feet Under," where the presence of the father's ghost was a constant, woven into the fabric of the show, "Back to Burgundy" uses the device indifferently and intermittently. There's no commitment to the trope, leading to a slightly cheesy result. The same is true for the moments when time folds in on itself, and the child versions of Jean, Juliette and Jérémie surge into the frame where the adults are now standing. If the film had a more frankly poetic and symbolic structure, if it was less literal, these devices might have had more thematic reverb.
Where the film is on firmest ground is in specifics of the culture of wine-making: the seasonal workers showing up, the rowdy parties at the end of the harvest, the taste-testing during the fermenting process, the worried glances at the sky, the obsessive checking of Weather Apps. In these sequences, the film really knows what it is doing, knows what it wants to say and convey. There's a whole section where Juliette has to throw around her weight as the boss for the first time, and publicly reprimands one of the seasonal workers for initiating a grape-fight in the fields. He pushes back against her authority. This altercation has an unexpected denouement later on, and unlike many of the other sequences, this one sparks with life, spontaneity, the unexpected.
Each sibling has a specific emotional arc. Jean stays on in France longer than he had planned, to help with the upcoming harvest, causing strife with his girlfriend and son back home. Juliette is thrust into the leadership position of the vineyard. Jérémie is infantilized by his new in-laws, and needs to make a stand as his own man. Some of these plot-lines are interesting, some are drawn out into practically slow-motion lengths, almost the way sub-plots are elongated during a season of television. The language is often so on-the-nose it's shocking it wasn't excised at some point in the process. (Jean saying in Voiceover: "Love is like wine. It takes time. It needs to ferment" is just one example.)
Jean left his hometown ten years ago. When his father falls ill, he comes back and reunites with his sister Juliette and his brother Jérémie. As seasons go by around their vineyard, they'll have to trust each other again.
Pio Marmaï plays Jean, a guy who's resistant to taking over the family business. After all, he wants to travel the world. He comes back home to Burgundy (near Beane/Dijon) and rediscovers his talent for winemaking and his love for his family. The flashbacks were tasteful.
At first, the movie is mainly told through one of its three main characters. When Jean (Pio Marmaï) comes back to his family home for seeing his father after many years of his absence, his younger siblings Juliette (Ana Girardot) and Jérémie (François Civil) warmly greet their older brother at first, but we soon sense the rather awkward relationship between Jean and his younger siblings. Mainly due to his personal conflict with his father, Jean left his family and then had wandered around the world for years without much contact with his family, and he even did not come when his mother died 5 years ago.
The harvest season turns out to be pretty good, and we observe how those harvested grapes are processed for the following steps of fermentation. As shown from a flashback scene, Jean, Juliette, and Jérémie know well about grapes and wines thanks to the early education received from their parents, but Juliette is more experienced and knowledgeable as a natural expert, and she is ready to produce her own wine although she is not so sure about whether she will be as successful as expected in her first official trial.
Against a scenic backdrop of Burgundian villages and vineyards, the seasons pass, beautifully shot, and we see the work in the vines, vat-house and cellar. There is a great Paulee (end-of-harvest party) scene.
The screenplay tells the story of Jean, who is back in Bourgogne after ten years away, called back by his winegrower father, who is on his deathbed. After he passes away, Jean, his brother and his sister decide to take over the family business. As the seasons go by, governing the pace of the vineyard and the various stages of the winemaking process, they ask themselves the question of how to protect the estate.
Alas, the combination of tight supply and increasing demand that has created cash has also created headaches. One headache is fraud, which Burgundians have been unable to eradicate. The more important headache relates back to the bad weather.
When it comes to knowledge about Burgundy, especially in a commercial context, there are few if any higher authorities than Jasper Morris MW. His annual report which you can find on Inside Burgundy.com is the bible for many wine buyers. In an exclusive extract Morris gives wine buyers the lowdown on Burgundy 2017, a vintage that has seen volumes come back to near normal at no expense of quality. With both red and whites, Morris lays out his buying strategy, looks at the sweet spots with both and when he feels the wines will be drinking best.
In one sense it is a very uniform vintage, with wines of middling intensity, accessible fruit, enough acidity and lightish tannins, reflecting their individual terroirs well. It is the same style of wine up and down the Côte. Differences derive from the yield, for those who pruned and de-budded according to their normal program, and then green-harvested in high summer have evidently made wines of much greater concentration than those who, having suffered for several years in a row, allowed the vines to carry their high yields through to harvest. It was easier to be stricter in the Côte de Nuits, where vignerons have suffered less in the last five years and prices are typically higher, than in the Côte de Beaune. It was also necessary as the ripening schedule was a little more backward in the more northerly Côte.
Head to Cluny, in the Saône-et-Loire department, to discover the ruins of an extraordinary spiritual centre. Founded by William I, Duke of Aquitaine, way back in 910AD, it was dedicated to Saint Peter and was once the seat of the largest monastic order in western Europe. Website: www.cluny-abbaye.fr
The monastic cellars of this celebrated winery in the heart of Burgundy date back to the 12th century and the vineyards extend over nearly 60 hectares, from Puligny-Montrachet to Aloxe-Corton. Among them are 15 Premiers Crus, two Grands Crus as well as a Monopole. Website: www.chateau-meursault.com 781b155fdc