{"id":605722,"date":"2026-09-04T14:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T14:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/605722\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T14:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T14:22:11","slug":"burgundy-review-complex-doc-on-french-wine-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/605722\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Burgundy’ Review: Complex Doc on French Wine Region"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soaring out of \u201cBurgundy\u201d on a champagne high \u2014 even if cr\u00e9mant would be more regionally apropos, I suppose \u2014 a French festival director turned to me, laughing: \u201cHow did two New Yorkers understand us so well?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t just talking about nationality. That \u201cus\u201d was narrower and, at the same time, far more inclusive \u2014 encompassing everyone who spends an unreasonable amount of time thinking about the grape. That includes him, me and surely the filmmakers themselves. Consider this a heads-up to fellow oenophiles: in \u201cBurgundy,\u201d you will feel seen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unlike New Yorkers Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw (\u201cThe Truffle Hunters\u201d), however, the subjects of this playful and oddly profound doc contend with a far more conservative AOC \u2014 the Appellation d\u2019Origine Contr\u00f4l\u00e9e, the rigid wine certification system that structures and regulates French viticulture along deeply parochial lines. In \u201cBurgundy\u201d and in Burgundy, conformity is the price of success.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even then, advancement is no guarantee. But let\u2019s not get ahead of ourselves \u2014 the filmmakers don\u2019t serve the bitter before the sweet. Instead, they lean into the same fantasy common across labels the world over: the estate as a land of pastoral luxury meant to bottle pleasure. \u201cEverything that follows is true,\u201d reads a winking opening title. \u201cExactly as we dreamed it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That dream extends well beyond the vines, giving local merchants, ma\u00eetre d\u2019s, scions and sommeliers the chance to play heightened versions of themselves in exactingly lit and composed frames pitched more Roy Andersson than Wes. Here, the filmmakers push further into fantastical affect than in previous work, especially in a number of 8mm interludes following a pair of young lovers with decidedly retro stylistic and entertainment choices \u2014 even if that throwback aesthetic echoes the arrested mentality of an Old World region where the 1960s still feel shockingly modern.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Rooney\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

That change arrives at a snail\u2019s pace should come as little surprise in a region which both fetishizes the escargot and hews to the old conservative dictum to stand athwart time yelling stop. Human lives, however, aren\u2019t afforded such luxury, making the act of transmission all the more essential. We see as much in one narrative strand, as a retiring ma\u00eetre d\u2019 trains his final apprentice; and in another, as a sommelier confronts the limits of his own human touch, trying \u2014 and failing \u2014 to do the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mentor succeeds thanks to a simple realization: whether he\u2019s a ma\u00eetre d\u2019 relaying that night\u2019s menu to a hungry table or a teacher passing down his craft, his role as a conduit is the same. Thrillingly, the filmmakers understand that great wine serves much the same purpose. For a newly divorced professional taster, it becomes a means of understanding his own wants and desires as he rebuilds his life in middle age. \u201cWhen you drink your birth year, you drink your whole life,\u201d he says on a date. (That we later see him dropping different bon mots with another woman might suggest that particular pairing didn\u2019t quite match.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

For a young fieldworker, wine becomes a means of understanding the world. In a film full of baroque, colorful compositions, one relatively understated image lingers longest: the young worker idling against a wall beside a friend, taking in the literal fruits of their labor. They swirl and sniff, then share the tastes that emerge \u2014 among them the very wildflowers that bracket the two in the frame. Through time, toil and ache, these hired hands have become alchemists, coaxing the landscape into the glass. What\u2019s not to love?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Turns out, quite a bit! Without ever losing its storybook style, \u201cBurgundy\u201d grows sharper once that young worker steps into the fore. He goes by Enzo, speaks with an accent that locates him somewhere more rural and less affluent, and styles himself with an Elvis Presley pompadour and the affect of a young Jean Gabin. \u201cI started to get old very young,\u201d he says, partly to flirt with girls his own age, but mostly to project \u2014 in a hilariously adolescent fashion \u2014 a sense of gravitas to the old-world, old-money patriarchs who hold the keys to his future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it works, up to a point, landing Enzo in front of landed gent Bertrand, who offers the boy an education only money can buy. Grand Crus are a luxury product, of course, and as with all such items, their value derives from, shall we say, more intangible factors.\u00a0Marrying young might prove Enzo\u2019s seriousness to Beaune\u2019s patriarchs, but seriousness doesn\u2019t buy an aristocratic title or bank account \u2014 and without either, his own\u00a0domain\u00a0is almost certainly beyond reach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With little overstatement, \u201cBurgundy\u201d relays a nuanced political bent by guiding us through a cloistered demimonde that runs counter, in every conceivable way, to the more cosmopolitan connotations of AOC. Lily-white and practically feudal, this depiction of Burgundy is the land most trads dream of; it also produces the bottles that take pride of place in progressives\u2019 home cellars, earning such high prices through the promise of unbroken tradition. What at first seems like a hazy snow-globe might come into sharper focus as a world enclosed by glass ceilings, kept in place as an ornament for the global market.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dweck and Kershaw never lose their sense of whimsy, often relaying the film\u2019s sharper jabs with the most pleasure of all. I could not in good conscience spoil the film\u2019s most hilarious sequence other than to say that over the course of three edits featuring three rather different activities, the filmmakers had the American to my right in stitches and the Frenchman to my left murmuring to himself in doleful recognition: \u201cBurgundy eats its young.\u201d\u00a0Wine is a conduit. Why shouldn\u2019t it evoke every emotion and contradiction?\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Everest-\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Soaring out of \u201cBurgundy\u201d on a champagne high \u2014 even if cr\u00e9mant would be more regionally apropos, I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[204221,146,273886,85,46,273887,397,2623],"class_list":["post-605722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-burgundy","tag-entertainment","tag-gregory-kershaw","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-michael-dweck","tag-movies","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}