Movie review: You Will Be My Son

(15)

An Oedipal tale set in a world of oenophiles, Legrand’s rousing, full-bodied drama may be late in reaching the UK (it’s almost two years old now) but is still well worth savouring. Niels Arestrup, French cinema’s favourite brooding patriarch of the moment, plays Paul de Marseul, a winemaker worried what will happen to his vineyards when he dies.

Paul doesn’t think his weak-willed son (Lorànt Deutsch) is up to running the family estate and therefore turns to Philippe (Nicolas Bridet), the swaggering son of his faithful steward. This is the kind of film in which all the characters, whatever mischief they are up to, always have a bottle of the best wine by their sides. Even a dying man in the hospital can’t resist quaffing. Arestrup would make a wonderful King Lear. He brings pathos, grandeur and menace to his role as the old man who regards “terroir” as sacred. You Will Be My Son is certainly the best wine-themed movie since Alexander Payne’s Sideways.