Film: The Tasting

 

 

 

The Tasting is an engaging romantic comedy about an unlikely couple who meet over a bottle of wine.

Hortense (Isabelle Carre) is a single midwife who loves babies and longs for one of her own.

Jacques (Bernard Campan) is a wine dealer who loves wine but has been warned by his doctor to give up alcohol.

He is intrigued when Hortense comes into his wine shop looking for a good bottle of wine – not for herself, but to share with a homeless group for whom she regularly cooks dinner.

 

 

She tells him the wine she enjoyed most recently was the one she tasted at her church, at communion.

It turns out to be an expensive drop – but, undeterred, she buys it for her homelesss group.

Jacques ignores his doctor’s advice until he has a near-fatal heart attack. After that, he joins a support group of reforming alcoholics.

Hortense, keen to learn more about wine – and about Jacques – joins one of his tasting classes, where the star student turns out to be Steve (Mounir Amamra), a troubled youth who works for Jacques as an intern.

It’s a convoluted story, and the romance between Jacques and Hortense is beset with secrets and misunderstandings, but unsurprisingly it all turns out well in the end.

 

 

The film is worth seeing for the fine performances by all concerned, specially Isabelle Carre, who lights up the screen with her expressive features and vivid smile.

The fine cinematography by Philippe Guilbert features stunning shots of the French wine country.

Director/ scriptwriter Ivan Calberac based the film on his play, Degustation.

The Tasting is now showing at Luna Leederville.

 

Watch the trailer…