T he French will be aghast: with climate change, the English are already encroaching on the sparkling wine trade, and now they’ve got the cheek to make biopics about the wine-makers too. Inadvertently or not, this Joe Wright-produced period drama functions as decorous product placement for champagne house Veuve Clicquot. Portraying Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot (Haley Bennett) in her climb from demure young lover to patriarchy-defying innovator who finally rejects remarriage as a means of securing legal autonomy, it owes a debt to Shekhar Kapur’s 1998 film Elizabeth.
It’s 1805, and 27-year-old Barbe-Nicole is under the cosh after her husband François (Tom Sturridge), a genius vintner but an unstable soul, kills himself. Her father-in-law Philippe (Ben Miles) doesn’t think she can run the estate, and her neighbours – including the Moët family – are eyeing up the property. But unafraid of getting her hands dirty, she resolves to continue François’ experiments towards perfecting what became the iconic “comet” vintage .
With the Clicquot finances in tatters and the Napoleonic wars hampering trade, she devises a clandestine continental sales network with the help of rakish broker Louis Bohne (Control’s Sam Riley). Director Thomas Napper (who previously helmed the 2017 boxing film Jawbone ) works from a delicate script that alternates François’ Byronic, laudanum-fuelled meltdown with Barbe-Nicole’s present-day struggles. It’s convincing in the br.