Name: The Vintner's Luck
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Released: 2009
Duration: T2H7M
Cast: Jérémie Renier, Gaspard Ulliel, Vera Farmiga, Keisha Castle-Hughes

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Kiwi director Niki Caro (Whale Rider) follows up her well-received Hollwood debut, North Country, with this adaptation of Elizabeth Knox's novel about a peasant winemaker in Napoleon-era, 19th Century France. Stars the great Vera Farmiga (The Departed) and Keisha Castle-Hughes as a foxy salt-of-the-earth peasant girl.

Sobran Jodeau (Jérémie Renier) is an ambitious young peasant winemaker with three loves – his beautiful and passionate wife Celeste (Keisha Castle-Hughes), the proudly intellectual baroness Aurora de Valday (Vera Farmiga) and Xas (Gaspard Ulliel), a fallen angel who strikes up an unlikely but enduring friendship. Under the angel's guidance, Sobran is forced to fathom the nature of love, belief and immortality – in pursuit of the perfect vintage.

Best Production Design and Costume Design at the NZ Film Awards 2010.

2009Rating: M, contains sex scenes127 minsNew Zealand, France

DramaFantasyRomance

All Reviews (5)

Director:: Niki Caro ('North Country, Whale Rider')
Writer:: Niki CaroJoan Scheckel
Cast:: Jérémie RenierGaspard UllielVera FarmigaKeisha Castle-Hughes

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The Vintner's Luck / Reviews

Variety

New Zealand writer-director Niki Caro delivers her least impressive vintage with this drearily literal-minded adaptation of "The Vintner's Luck," Elizabeth Knox's novel about a 19th-century French peasant who receives celestial guidance in matters of love and winemaking. It's one of those ambitious grand-summation works -- rooted in the bittersweet truism that life, like wine, grows richer with age -- but not even Caro's earthy, sensuous filmmaking can overcome the tale's glib supernatural conceit, overstated moral lessons and overall dramatic torpor.

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New Zealand Herald

The dreary, rambling narrative, the trite theme, the unconscionably long running time combine to make a major disappointment.

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Newshub

It was an ambitious project to adapt this tale, and while it’s in no way a failure, it’s certainly not a triumph.

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Hollywood Reporter

Very silly and incoherent melodrama gets tangled up in the wings of an angel.

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Christchurch Press

The Vintner's Luck is good to look at, and a few scenes hint at the film I think the book, and we, deserved. But the rest is a baffling

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