Like wine, some movies need time to be appreciated. When it was released back in 2006, A Good Year suffered a little with critics and audiences, perhaps due to misplaced expectations. Its director Ridley Scott and star Russell Crowe had previously collaborated on the rousingly popular epic Gladiator, and some were expecting more blokey, muscular entertainment. Instead, what we got was a light, romantically tinged comedy-drama based on a novel about an English banker who reevaluates his life after inheriting his uncle’s French vineyard.
Max (played by Crowe) lives the fast life in London’s financial world, issuing trades with the cockiness of a gambler on a hot streak. He receives word that his uncle Henry (Albert Finney) has died, leaving him his sizeable estate in Provence where Max spent his childhood summers. Though filled with fond memories of Henry and his chateau, Max had long been out of touch – “probably because I’ve become an asshole” – he sighs to his assistant Gemma (Archie Panjabi) – and ventures out to the estate with the idea of selling it.
There he meets some obstacles: the property is decaying, the longtime overseers of Henry’s estate are unhappy at the prospective sale and an unexpected American visitor, Christie (Abbie Cornish) arrives, claiming to be Henry’s long-lost daughter, which could threaten Max’s claim to the estate. Also on the scene is Fanny, a no-nonsense local played irresistibly by Marion Cotillard.
A Good Year initially struggles to find its footing. Some early comic bits don’t quite land as Scott tries to play things with a light touch, contrary to some of his more ruggedly serious output; we’re not used to seeing Crowe channelling Cary Grant. But the film soon settles into a comfortable groove and becomes very entertaining – and beautiful, with southern France captured sumptuously by Scott and cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd’s painterly imagery.
The film veers back and forth between flashbacks to Max’s childhood, spent running around the chateau and learning bits of wisdom from Uncle Henry, played with effortless charisma by the late Finney, who elevated everything he appeared in. His spirit is a shadow over the present day; Max wistfully remembering the past while enjoying the estate’s wines and Henry’s colourful wardrobe. Max puts a price on everything, which causes a rift with some of the French locals. “This place doesn’t suit my life,” Max says. “No, it is your life that doesn’t suit this place,” replies Fanny.
Crowe does some of his most charismatic work in A Good Year, which serves as a demonstration of his range after Gladiator; he can do comedy, he can be a romantic hero. The film is also packed with other fine performances, including Freddie Highmore as the young Max, Tom Hollander as Max’s very expensive real estate broker and Didier Bourdon and Isabelle Candelier, who entertain as the caretakers of Henry’s home. And of course Cotillard, who is among the most captivating actors in modern cinema.
Scott has taken on more ambitious subjects of greater scope and weight than this, but A Good Year may be one of his most easily enjoyable and emotionally satisfying efforts, in a long career that has traversed so many times and places, in this world and others. He and Crowe have made five films together, but not since 2010. Hopefully, as rumours have periodically suggested, a sixth collaboration is in the works. For now, we have A Good Year.
