Back to Burgundy (2017)

Cédric Klapisch returns to the family table with Back to Burgundy, a film in which three siblings inherit a vineyard, a tax bill they cannot pay, and a father's silence that outlives him. Jean has spent a decade in Chile and Australia, drinking wine and avoiding France. He comes home when the old man starts dying, which is the classic schedule for such returns. What follows is a patient seasonal drama: pruning, harvest, the inheritance tax, the brother-in-law's father sniffing around the best parcels. The camera loves the rows of vines. The film does not love much else with the same intensity.

The social consciousness on display here is of the ambient, unremarked variety. The cast includes Black and Spanish-French performers in supporting parts, which reflects the ordinary makeup of French cinema and not an agenda. Juliette is revealed to be among the two finest winemakers in the family, surpassing the older generation, and she is granted a romantic life of her own. The film treats this as family business, not as a thesis. There is a grasping landowner father-in-law, and there are inheritance taxes, and one can read a mild grumble about money into it all, but the anger never rises above the level of a dinner-table sigh. No one lectures. Nobody is asked to check a privilege. The vineyard is not a metaphor for the climate. It is a vineyard.

What we get instead is a sentimental, well-made drama about a father who was not hated as much as his son believed, and a letter that arrives too late. It is pleasant, unhurried, and entirely content to observe. The oenophiles will be intoxicated. The rest of us will note the clunky plotting and move on to the next bottle.