Widow Clicquot

Haley Bennett performs the role of Cliquot quite admirably. The supporting cast is fine but aside from her performance no other actor or actress is memorable. There is a lot of dead time in this movie which is likely because the only real point of the movie is to show that she had to overcome the politics of the time with Napoleonic laws and men believing she wasn't cut out to run the vineyard. I would have liked to see more scenes showing how hard she had to work aside from just constantly watching her mix ingredients in vials. There are some parts of her facing men who doubted her, but I wanted more so you could really root for her.

The court scene at the end I thought had so much potential to be used to tell her story of what she had to go through in greater detail, but instead it was decided to just be an exclamation point for her story.

As a side note, all of the accents are very British which is confusing to me considering they're supposed to be French.

Overall, it's not a bad film, and shows that individuals have the ability to overcome their political surroundings. However, it certainly isn't one that will wow you either.

Working in the industry, I am aware of the place that Madame Clicquot holds in the champagne world to this day. I had read this book and learned some very interesting things about what she did and how she did it. More so, some of her 19th century innovations that are still today's standards. Maybe her most important innovation, the riddling of the bottles during the bottle fermentation, is bearly noted and definitely not named.

What came across in the movie was almost none of that. This ended up somewhat of a confusing love story set against the vineyards of the Champagne region of France. Even her love story with M. Clicquot is ignored, even to the fact and reasons for their marriage taking place in the wine caves under Reims.

This could have been a great story highlighting a woman who really beat the odds when everything was working against her. I had hoped that this might be a good movie for my co-workers to view to learn more about a product we sell quite often. Having watched it, I cannot do that in good conscience, however!

Relatively dry period drama "Widow Clicquot" is the true story of how in the late 16th century the titular Barbe Nicole Clicquot (rising star Haley Bennett - excellent) inherited the Clicquot vineyards of Champagne from crazy genius husband Tom Sturridge, and with steely determination (and the support of Sam Riley) fought off largely chauvinistic pressure from those around her (including Ben Miles & Paul Rhys) AND oppressive Napoleonic laws, to forge a legacy living on today through Veuve Clicquot. Thomas Napper directs solidly, and Erin Dignam's screenplay (cut with flashbacks) is interesting, tho perhaps only REALLY interesting to wine enthusiasts.

A very good film exploring the start of Veuve Cliquet although I felt it could have explored a lot more about how her champagne mixing made the drink such a success rather than focussing on her obviously manic husband. 90 minutes was about 30 minutes too short for such an interesting subject played superbly by. Haley Bennett. The cast was excellent and some compelling characters, which again cloud have been explored more deeply, e.g. What was the past of the distributor, what was the relationship with the father and workers? Overall one of the better films I have seen in 2024 and highly recommend.

Haley Bennett turns in a reasonable effort here as the eponymous lady who has to keep control of her late husband's vineyards at a time in history when Napoleon's wars were raging throughout Europe - and France wasn't doing so well, by this point - and his laws prohibited women from managing so much as a dinner party. The death of François (Tom Sturridge) has left her a property that her former father-in-law Philippe (Ben Miles) is keen to sell to the neighbouring Mr. Moet but with a bit of help from accountant "Edouard" (Anson Boon) and roguish distributor "Droite" (Paul Rhys) she is determined to develop her own brand of Champagne and, probably more precariously, get the stuff to the well-heeled markets readily prepared to pay through the nose for wine without the "frog-eyed bubbles". The framework is here for a good story, depicting the struggles of a woman - and a father - coming to terms with an untimely death amidst a wartime environment. We do learn a little, via flashback, that her marriage was loving but that her husband became mentally ill putting huge stress on this woman and on their young daughter but the dramatisation is rather let down by a typically uninspiring performance from Sturridge and some quite weak storytelling. Certainly, the film looks great and it illustrates well the difficulties in getting the vintage grown in the first place before bottling these mobile explosive devices and taking them, by wagon, to market and it's quite richly scored by Bryce Dessner, but director Thomas Napper has over-relied on the aesthetics of the film and put too little into the characterisations of a woman who clearly knew her own mind and was not going to let her beloved husband's legacy disappear - even at the risk of bankruptcy. It's worth a watch, but a cinema screening doesn't really add much value to this undercooked period drama that just lacked, well, fizz.