a good blue suit

When it all comes together -- script, set, casting, acting, directing -- it can be magnificent and memorable.  Such are the first three minutes of the film A Good Year.

For those three minutes, I forgive any future scenes which are predictable or silly.

Beautiful in so many ways is the French chateau with its vineyard and its large and inviting patio entrance where the opening scene takes place at a small, round, chessboard table.  The weather looks perfect and there's great music playing inside the house. 

A good film does this to you; it makes you wish to be there, to join the characters, in this case the masterful Albert Finney and the adorably impressive Freddie Highmore. 

Oh, that it were real and that I could share the afternoon and the '69 Bandol!  I'd savor each sip while Finney in the role of Uncle Henry, instructs us about wine and the importance of a good blue suit.  

The minutes are made magnificent as Ridley Scott sums up humanity in its many forms and presents them to us so subtlely within that single, memorable scene. 

age and youth

wisdom and innocence
honesty and deception
competition and sacrifice

humor and seriousness

A Good Year, a film by Ridley Scott

based on the book by Peter Mayle