Widow Clicquot

Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin married young and began working a vineyard with her husband. François was interested in making wine and the two experimented together. François dies. She is widowed at twenty seven and takes over the business. The law of the period does not allow married women to trade; being a widow gives her the right. Her father in law wants to sell. Barbe-Nicole refuses. There is a war, exports are closed, and the product itself is a problem: sediment stays in the bottles and the wine comes out cloudy. Thomas Napper directs. Haley Bennett plays Barbe-Nicole and Tom Sturridge plays François; Sam Riley is in the cast. The person is real; the Veuve Clicquot label carries her name and the firm still trades today. The solution to the sediment shown in the film is a real innovation; placing bottles neck down in a sloped table and turning them each day is attributed to her and is still used. The matter it treats is a woman's position inside commercial law; the film handles it as a technical problem rather than a campaign. The vineyard and production scenes are detailed; the soil, the harvest and the cellar are the narrative's material. The narrative proceeds through flashback and the marriage sections cut across the present. Its limit is structure; the flashbacks break the rhythm and the business strand is not opened enough. Who it is for: viewers who like period drama and true life stories. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the narrative episodic, and the dramatic tension low.