A Good Year
Short description
Max Skinner is a successful London financial trader who inherits a vineyard in Provence from his uncle Henry, where he spent childhood summers. He travels to France intending to sell the estate quickly, but finds the property's affairs less straightforward than he expected. A Californian woman named Christie Roberts arrives claiming to be the dead uncle's daughter, which would make her the rightful heir under French law. Max also becomes involved with Fanny Chenal, a local woman, while the vineyard's longtime worker Francis Duflot remains attached to the land. The film follows Max as his plans to profit from the inheritance give way to a reconnection with the place and the memories attached to it.
Ridley Scott directed A Good Year, his seventeenth film in chronological order, arriving between Kingdom of Heaven and All the Invisible Children. Russell Crowe, who had worked with Scott before, plays Max; Albert Finney appears as Uncle Henry, with Marion Cotillard as Fanny, Abbie Cornish as Christie, Didier Bourdon as Francis and Tom Hollander as Charlie. Marc Klein wrote the screenplay, and Scott produced. Made for about 35 million dollars, it took roughly 42 million worldwide, a modest result.
Audience response was warmer than the critical one: on IMDb it holds 6.9 from about 107,000 votes and on TMDB 6.7 from roughly 1,700, while a critics' rating stands at 5.1 from 137 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film is based on Peter Mayle's novel "A Good Year" (2004).
- In one scene of the film, Russell Crowe's character picks up a handful of earth in a vineyard, rubs it, and smells it. This is a reference to 'Gladiator,' which was also worked on by Crowe and Scott.
- Filming took place in France and England from September to December 2005.
- One of the roles in the film was to be played by Aaron Eckhart, but the actor dropped out of the project at the last moment.
- The book that Christie borrows from Max to read is "Death in Venice" by the German writer Thomas Mann.
- According to director and producer Ridley Scott, all the scenes in France were filmed within an eight-minute drive of his home in Provence, where he periodically lives for the past 15 years.
- Director Ridley Scott developed the main elements of the plot, and then writer Peter Mayle based a book on them, intended to serve as the basis for the film. When the book was published, it turned out that the author's vision differed significantly from Ridley Scott's original ideas, and as a result, the director preferred to film the story as he had initially envisioned it.
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