Mondovino Directed, shot and edited by Jonathan Nossiter Classification: G Rating: ***
American Jonathan Nossiter is a filmmaker (Signs and Wonders, Sunday), a trained sommelier who has also written about wine (every independent director needs a backup gig after all) and speaks several languages.
This skill set serves him well in Mondovino, a sprawling personal journey, filled with an array of fascinating characters, through the world of wine.
The intuitive visual and storytelling style of Mondovino will not suit every palate. The "drunken" hand-held shooting of Nossiter - he travelled with his filmmaking companions, Uruguyan director Juan Pittaluga and photographer Stephanie Pommez, over two years, so the camera gets passed around - not to mention the constant puddle-jumping between regions in France, Italy, California and South America, may make some viewers feel like they've had too much to drink on an empty stomach.
But if you surrender to its quirky, jerky style and stop straining to find a single narrative line, Mondovino offers much to savour. The small camera and Nossiter's sincere curiosity and unpretentious approach make the film intimate and accessible as he visits international powerbrokers, local artisan winemakers, journalists and importers in what feels, overall, like an exploration of the soul of wine.
Nossiter allows himself the filmmaker's prerogative to take short detours. There seem to be dogs at everyone's heels throughout the film, sitting obediently by their masters, barking wildly, secretly nibbling at wheels of cheese, or farting, as does the bulldog at the home of influential American wine critic Robert B. Parker, whose nose is insured for a million bucks.
At first Mondovino feels like a wine travelogue, but a variety of themes emerge, primarily through the editing, which allows Nossiter to build some of his characters throughout the film using footage from a single interview. Wine culture may seem impenetrable and eccentric to outsiders, but many of the issues and dynamics in that world are universal - the "globalization" of consumers' taste aided by technology versus artisan winemakers and their terroir (soil) and age-old techniques.
The philosophies and struggles of older winemakers like the feisty Aimé Guibert from Aniane, France, and the more soft-spoken but wise Battista Columbu of Sardinia, Italy, are juxtaposed against the California-based Mondavi family, whose company produces over a million bottles worldwide each year, and whose ambitions are intergalactic (at one point, son Michael says he hopes the family will be producing wine on other planets 15 generations from now).
How and where a person is filmed is often more revealing about their character than anything they say. The best example is Michel Rolland, the most expensive and influential wine consultant in the world, a jolly guy for the most part, who is interviewed in his chauffeured car and frequently barks on the car phone to his clients, telling them to "micro-oxygenate."
From the Frescobaldi and Antinori families - rival Tuscan winemaking dynasties - to Antonio Cabezas, an indigenous winemaker in Argentina who works his one hectare of grapes to make $60 a month, Mondovino reveals more about the people who make wine and the importance of family, than the mysteries about wine itself.
Special to The Globe and Mail