Film review: Widow Clicquot
In this very French story showing as part of the British Film Festival, a young widow mixes business acumen with pioneering techniques to create a style of sparkling white that captivates the world.
In early 19th-century France, the owner of a textile business in Reims who has a small sideline in winemaking, Phillipe Clicquot, marries his son François (Tom Sturridge) to Barbe Nicole Ponsardin (Haley Bennett), the daughter of a neighbouring industrialist. This arranged marriage grows into love, even as François shows himself to be a volatile man prone to flights of fancy who not long into the marriage kills himself.
His legacy is to interest his wife in the wine side of the business. The Champagne district was famous then for its still whites, and while sparkling wine was being made, champagne as we know it was not. Soon after Barbe Nicole inherits the Clicquot estate, the Moët family are sniffing around, hoping to make the land and vines theirs. Barbe Nicole has other ideas. She studied wine with her husband and came from a wine-making family; when he dies, she persuades her father-in-law to back her new sparkling venture.
A cinematic portrayal of what the real Veuve (Widow) Clicquot achieved, set among a sea of rolling vineyards, could hardly be more French, yet here it is part of the British Film Festival with British actors speaking English and directed by Thomas Napper, who worked on Atonement (2007) and directed Jawbone (2017), about a former boxing champion. Film marketing being what it is, the decision was probably sound, and – with the exception of the entire French nation – who would quibble?
It is an incredible story. Barbe Nicole was an astute businesswoman, as well as a thoughtful winemaker who took an audacious gamble in evading blockades from the Napoleonic wars by shipping her champagne to Amsterdam and then to Russia, where she had a buyer.
Obstacles abound, as we can expect, but she rolls up her sleeves and gets her skirts muddy. Her male backers are increasingly sceptical, possibly jealous, and a shipment is lost after it spoils in the heat. She sells off her valuables and starts again, her sights once more on Russia.
Haley Bennett’s background in Hillbilly Elegy (2020) and Girl on a Train (2016) did nothing to set her up for this, but she delivers an attractive, soft-focus performance about the trials of a woman whose gifts set her apart from her male competitors. She is shown staring earnestly into vials of champagne, swilling and tasting to get the proportions just right.
It seems remiss not to have devoted more screen time to understanding what the real Widow Clicquot did, which was to use her palate to guide her through a pioneering process that allowed the yeast sediment to be tipped off, leaving a clean sparkling wine with finely beaded, flavour-enhancing bubbles. The process, called riddling, was such a heavily guarded secret her workers were sworn not to reveal it.
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In a particularly romantic touch, Barbe Nicole’s first great batch was based on the miracle French vintage of 1811, which she batched as the “comet” wine, marking the year in which the Great Comet passed through. However, the storytelling leans towards the superficial as Barbe Nicole becomes the lover of the rakish merchant who markets her wine, Louis Bohne (Sam Riley), yet turns down an offer that would have cost her the vineyard.
The Widow Clicquot created an empire based on a style of wine so exemplary that a century later the area gained exclusive rights to sell under the regional name of Champagne. It’s all very French.
Widow Clicquot is part of the British Film Festival, which continues until December 8.