"You Will Be My Son": A Full-bodied Concoction

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 23 February 2013 11:31

Written by David Gurevich

The latest vintage of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema (February 28 to March 10, 2013), the annual harvest of contemporary French film from the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Unifrance Films, gives cause to clink glasses. A particularly heady offering is Gilles Legrand's new father-son drama You Will Be My Son (Tu seras mon fils), set in the world of Bordeaux terroirs.

Picture formations of sunshine-caressed vines climbing up and down the hill, with the medieval fortress in the background. Picture a world where wine is taken more seriously than anything else.

Endless reds and whites are tasted throughout the movie; few are drunk; most are spat out, as befits professionals. In one scene, a winemaker who is visiting his dying father in the hospital attempts to pour the doctor and nurse some of that ambrosia (“not on the job, monsieur”). The latter wrinkles her nose and delivers a spot-on analysis of all the 999 components. I melted. A rare US nurse who speaks English would know the difference between Diet Coke and Coke Classic, at best.

The mood here is anything but playful à la California comedy Sideways. Wine is serious business. It's the maker and breaker of relationships among the characters, sometimes even the killer. The plot and characters are as old-fashioned as a 19th-century family novel: there is formidable vineyard owner Paul de Marseul; his weak son Martin (Lorànt Deutsch) and his dying estate manager (Patrick Chesnais) who, it seems, can only be replaced by his own son Philippe (Nicolas Bridet), who is everything de Marseul fils is not. And the reigning element is ze palate - it’s all about ze palate!

Actually, it’s more than that – it’s about being professional against being paternal. Should de Marseul have his business inherited by his son, whom he disdains, or by Philippe, who's in a better position to save the brand? It's blood vs. wine, and de Marseul comes up with an ingenuous legal way to solve the problem: did you know that in France you may adopt an adult, even one whose parent is  still alive?

This maneuver comes atop one scene after another where de Marseul thoroughly humiliates his son for everything under the Saint-Émilion sun, from jogging US-style to failing to supply a grandson. With most actors, resentment of the old man would have already forced me out of the theater; but de Marseul is played with remarkable precision and panache by Nils Arestrup (recently in Spielberg’s War Horse, and especially fabulous as a Corsican godfather in A Prophet). Arestrup's de Marseul doesn’t just dump on his son gratuitously; we see what’s behind each humiliation, and this knowledge makes us pause and not dismiss de Marseul out of hand. Everyone and everything in this movie, from the rest of the cast to the beautiful landscapes and even wines and $3,000 shoes (that’s a story unto itself), is a supporting character to Arestrup’s.

With the exception of a final twist in the plot –- which only seems surprising but on balance is a perfectly logical denouement –- You Will Be My Son is a solid and intelligent discourse on life and life’s work, made seriously and respectfully without falling back on one-liners and “teachable moments” that derail so many Hollywood movies. People who don’t care for this sort of thing should stick to jug wine and leave Pétrus alone.

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