- BOTTLE SHOCK is a pleasant enough film well served by an excellent cast that amplifies the script’s virtues while minimizing its flaws. Based on the true story of a 1976 blind wine tasting that shook the world, it brings together a perfect storm of underdogs who, each hoping to prove something to themselves and to the world at large, decisively challenge the heretofore unassailable supremacy of French wine. A smart move on the part of the writers, who have conjured up a first-rate device to create the proper dramatic tension even for those who know the outcome of what came to be known as “The Judgment of Paris.”
- Underdogs come in many varieties, the first and foremost being the demiurge of the piece, Stephen Spurrier (Alan Rickman), a British ex-pat in Paris running a failing wine shop that doubles as an academy of wine. Snubbed badly by the French wine folk, he comes up with a radical idea to publicize his operation by organizing a blind tasting between French wines and the upstart and wholly unrespected product of the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma in California. He also dreams of it bringing him a measure of acceptance among his Gallic peers, or at least a better table at official wine society functions.
- Meanwhile in California, Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman), an ex-attorney and dour perfectionist who gave up a lucrative career to make wine, is struggling to make a go of Chateau Montelena. With three mortgages and a son, Bo (Chris Pine) who is less interested in winemaking than in partying and pursuing the ladies of the valley, his dream of making the perfect chardonnay is looking less and less likely to come true. Bo’s best pal and one of the vinyard’s employees, Gustavo, with no capital, no way of getting any, and only his lifetime in the vineyards to build on, dreams of making his own wine, as does the Chateau’s new intern, Sam (Rachael Taylor), whose nubile good looks inspire admiration, but not a lot of confidence in her abilities. As for Bo, everyone thinks he’s a loser, even Bo.
- When Spurrier and the elder Barrett meet, it’s magic. Actually, it’s a flat tire and neither is particularly impressed with the other, but when Spurrier samples the wine in Barrett’s barrels, it’s a revelation. So are the wines he samples from all the other barrels in the valley. And while the Barretts spar, literally and figuratively, over whether to take the proposed competition seriously, Spurrier has given the valley something it hasn’t had before: the respect of an outsider. And the idea to charge for wine tasting.
- Rickman is an inexhaustible source of delight. With his trademark sneer, he faces the locals with a peevish ennui that gives way to an unbridled respect, unbridled in a distinctly British way, of course, leading to one of the best exchanges in the film as Spurrier explains to Barrett why it is, exactly, that the American doesn’t like him. The way Rickman savors the pronunciation of the word “peach” when Spurrier samples the Barrett’s chardonnay, has the same complexity, texture, and layering as the wine over which his character is swooning, while the expression is one of awe and utter disbelief. As his sidekick in France, Denis Farina throws himself into the role of the déclassé American with a relish that sparkles and makes for such a fine foil for Rickman that it’s a shame there are not more scenes between them .
- Pine is charismatic and pheromone-rich as a charmer who longs for substance, while Pullman is prickly, never giving way to the far less interesting temptation to temper his character’s single-mindedness with a case of the warm and fuzzies. Rodriguez brings a nice but never overbearing intensity to Gustavo’s aspirations, and Taylor plays up her character’s smarts and knockout looks, never to better effect than in the mandatory wet t-shirt and shorts sequence as Sam cleans out the winery’s thrasher.
- BOTTLE SHOCK is a fine object lesson in the perils of perfectionism, snobbery, and preconceived notions. If the script flits along too quickly to properly fill in the backstories of all its protagonists, the actors are up to filling in nuance while the camera, with its heroic sweeping shots, makes the vineyards of the story into the stuff of legends. It’s not perfect, but, and here comes the de rigeur wine analogy, it has the same dry and witty insouciance of a good vintage, tempered with an assertive backbone and a mellow aftertaste.
[…] little time with Alan Rickman when he was here for Bottle Shock in 2008 (interview here). I did, though, get in a question that mixed two things about which he […]