The Tasting sees two lonely people meet at a wine tasting. So will alcohol bring them together or drive them apart? Directed by Ivan Calbérac, from his hit play.
The Tasting sees two lonely people meet at a wine tasting. So will alcohol bring them together or drive them apart?
The one big surprise in The Tasting is it doesn't star Laure Calamy, the klutzy, breakout star of hit TV series Call My Agent. She seems to be in every other film produced in France over the past couple of years.
Instead, writer-director Ivan Calbérac has picked the next best thing - Isabelle Carré as the middle-aged, middle-class midwife Hortense.
Meanwhile the other half of the potential couple, Jacques, has received bad news from his doctor. He's got to cut out alcohol for his heart's sake.
Jacques protests - he runs a bottle-store after all. And he doesn't even drink alcohol. Just wine. Top end wine. In fact, he runs regular tasting sessions on the subject.
Which is how Jacques meets Hortense, who expresses an interest in wine. Though you get the idea she's just as interested in Jacques himself.
And who wouldn't be, after all? Like most French male film stars, Bernard Campan is middle-aged, bald, with bags under the eyes and a bad disposition.
Jacques also has a cheeky new intern Steve - another familiar French movie character. He's a young, second-generation Algerian wastrel, who by the end of the film, we predict, will come right.
He may even develop an interest in wine. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The first tasting session is small but select - Jacques himself, the lovely Hortense, rude boy Steve and - offering contrast to the diffident Jacques - a smooth operator called Guillaume.
Wine is all about looks, smell, taste, says Jacques. Like women, leers Guillaume, indicating that the Me Too movement has its work cut out, gaining traction in France.
They sip, they learn, but before one thing can lead to another, our mismatched couple needs to overcome various hurdles. Jacques is clearly nursing a mysterious secret as well as a dicey ticker. While Hortense tends to get drunk on the smell of a damp cork.
The Tasting behaves like we expect in this kind of film, with Jacques and Hortense regularly drifting apart while the audience urges them to get back together.
Curiously one thing that happens in the film - though possibly not in Ivan Calbérac's hit play, which it's drawn from - is a movement away from the wine-tasting sessions which, you'd think, would be a regular occurrence…