Widow Clicquot review: a sickly sweet champagne story

This is just the latest in a succession of self-congratulatory, syrupy brand movies.

Brands increasingly dominate consumption, however much we may claim to prefer the local, the artisanal, the authentic and unprocessed. Cinema has been a little slow in servicing this development, having been stuck on old-fashioned biographies, but recently there’s been quite a wave of origins stories for triumphant businesses.

The Social Network, about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, was a pioneer in 2010. Lately, there’s been Air (the Air Jordan shoe), BlackBerry (the defunct smartphone), Flamin’ Hot (spicy Cheetos), Tetris (the video game). There will be plenty more loyal effusions. The success of Barbie, a euphoric brand movie that didn’t bother with a story, guarantees that.

When it comes to wine, “Champagne is France’s only region of strong brands” noted Andrew Jefford in his brilliant 2002 book The New France, exploring the opposite: innovative individual producers. Since then, grower champagnes have advanced, but so too has brand consolidation. The luxury conglomeration LVMH, the initials standing for the merger of Louis Vuitton with Moët Chandon, was established in the late 1980s, but is now the first European company to have a valuation of more than $500bn, making its owner Bernard Arnault the world’s third-richest person. Among its many other champagne holdings (Krug, Ruinart, Dom Pérignon), it boasts Veuve Clicquot, whose yellow-label, blandly standardised, non-vintage product retails at £48 a bottle.

Widow Clicquot (a daftly Anglicised title, betraying no confidence in the most basic grasp of French) is a dim, fawning account of the achievements of Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin (1777-1866), the original creator of the marque. Ponsardin, who came from a wealthy Champagne family, entered into an arranged marriage with the scion of a neighbouring house, François Clicquot, when she was 21. He died six years later, from mysterious causes, maybe typhoid, maybe suicide. Despite patriarchal disapproval, his young widow took over the wine business and made it very successful, partly by pioneering sales abroad, especially to Russia, despite the ongoing wars. The firm’s sales soared from 43,000 bottles in 1816 to 280,000 in 1821. By the time Widow Clicquot died at the age of 89 the firm was selling 750,000 bottles a year and she was a formidable force in the industry.

Widow Clicquot is based on a soupy 2008 biography by the American writer Tilar J Mazzeo, which hails her as a proto-girlboss, using lots of imagination to fill in gaps. Mazzeo concedes at the start that Barbe-Nicole was not conventionally pretty, being plain, chubby and four and half feet tall at the age of 16, but the film takes a more flattering view. She is played by Haley Bennett, a co-producer of the film with her partner Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice). He directed her in their last outing, the dreadful musical Cyrano, but this time the job has been delegated to Thomas Napper (Jawbone).

We meet Barbe-Nicole as she prepares for her husband’s funeral and resolves to take on the business, rather than sell up as all the men around her expect. For her, keeping the vineyards is keeping the memory of François (Tom Sturridge) alive. The film portrays their marriage in repeated flashbacks as it takes forward her success story. He is wildly romantic, singing to his vines, persuading her to try it too (an orchestra piles in). They rhapsodise about their vinous plans. “I want our champagne to have structure, depth,” she says. “It must reflect your elegance,” he replies. “Your boldness,” she returns. “Your light,” he says. But he later turns out to be half-crazy, violent and erratic, even abusive, a quite separate drama.

Meanwhile, the widow resolutely develops her business, despite setbacks (bad weather, exploding bottles) and chauvinism. She pointedly says of her vines: “When they struggle to survive, they become more reliant on their own strength. They become more of what they were meant to be.” A hint. No technical matters are addressed and it is never mentioned that at this time all champagne was grossly syrupy.

In a peculiar, climactic trial scene, Widow Clicquot is accused of being a rackety woman unfit to run the business. She replies in therapy-speak, asserting that she is “not just one self”. But such anachronisms are as nothing compared with the way that France is presented entirely in English once again. French film-makers have not yet returned the favour by giving us a Francophone life of Edward Elgar, or the story of Stilton, but it will surely be delectable when they do.

“Widow Cliquot” is in cinemas now