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Film Fridays: What We Know About Mondovino
For once, we can plug a film we’ve actually seen. We screened Jonathan Nossiter’s Wine-isn’t-fine flick, Mondovino, on our grandma’s old telly, a large, but not cinema-size affair. And still we nearly heaved. But it was a good kind of near-heaving. The doc, shot handheld and loosy goosy over a few years, takes pains to make frames weird, and angles weirder. Often it works. More often it makes your tummy uneasy. But the shaky cam doesn’t take away from the film, which is a highly entertaining romp through the vineyards of the world, from the small, old-fashioned vintners of France to the cocky corporate California companies.
What’s most amazing is how frank the characters in the film are. Perhaps they felt so completely at home with the charming and facile director that they didn’t realized how frank they were being. Rolland, the world’s preeminent wine consultant, nearly brags his way out of shot. And Boisset, heir and VP of the third largest wine producers in France, jumps into a barrel of grapes in his skivvies, in a ridiculously embarrasing publicity stunt.
It’s too broad a subject for one doc to hope to tackle in two dutch-angled hours, but Nossiter gives us a glimpse of the life and politics of wine and winemaking. It certainly makes you think about what you drink. And how you might look if someone interviewed you with a camera nearly up your nose.
Also there are a lot of dogs.The shot of a large French farm dog gnawing at a full wheel of cheese may very well be worth the price of admission, if you like that type of thing.