WINE, WOMEN & MOVIES

Wine and women go with most things, in most circumstances and almost at any time - preferably just the two of you. When you include the movies, it becomes a date.

Sofia Coppola has won fame as director, producer and screenwriter, mostly for LOST IN TRANSLATION (2003) with Bill Murray (Bob Harris) and Scarlett Johansson (Charlotte) for which she won an Oscar for best original screenplay. Sofia is of course the daughter of film director and wine producer, Francis Ford Coppola. Taking this further, she created a range of SOFIA sparkling wines, which also contains a striking pink single-serve mini can.

Now, producing a film (a romantic-comedy) set in the wine industry is an entirely different matter.

You can take A WALK IN THE CLOUDS (1995) with Keanu Reeves (Paul Sutton) and Aitana Sánchez-Gijón (Victoria Arago), escaping on a nostalgic dream at The Clouds, the wine farm of the Arago family.

Ending A GOOD YEAR (2006) in Provençe, such as in the story with Russell Crowe (Max Skinner) and Marion Cotillard (Fanny Chenal), is certainly a much better option than drifting SIDEWAYS (2004) with Paul Giamatti (Miles Raymond) and Thomas Haden Church (Jack) in the Napa wine counties. Apart from two entirely different styles of romantic comedy, it displays the French and American lifestyles in the winelands and their different attitudes toward wine, women and love.
SIDEWAYS is the more critically acclaimed movie, however much you like the French ambiance.
This created a major cult following for Pinot Noir in the States. So, is it something to be exploited?

Since both France (but seen from an English point of view) and the US have had their version of wine and women amongst the vineyards, what about the rest of the wine producing countries? Here we already have an old world versus new world approach.

Have there been any other movies made with the winelands as a backdrop? More importantly, are they any good?