Can good wine restore the taste of life? The answer is “yes” in The tasting of Ivan Calbérac where a widowed wine merchant played by Bernard Campan meets a midwife in need of a child played by Isabelle Carré. But how do these brilliant actors make the viewer feel like they’re sticking their elbows out with them?
“You first have to know that we didn’t really drink alcohol on the set”, explains Isabelle Carré to 20 minutes on the occasion of the Francophone Film Festival of Angoulême. As with the play that inspired this tender comedy, the actors must draw on their imagination to make the public believe that they are consuming delectable wines. “We do not laugh with these subjects in France, has fun the actor. In the theatre, if I had the misfortune to make a mistake in an appellation, I received fulminatory messages. »
The taste of good wine
The notion of taste is not felt in the cinema and it is therefore not easy to make it felt. “It’s a question of expression and staging, confides Isabelle Carré. To paraphrase the title of another film in which we played Bernard Campan and me, we must remember the beautiful things. » When the solitary woman that she embodies is introduced to oenology, her gaze lights up and her eyes start to sparkle as if she had just had a wonderful encounter. The film does not celebrate drunkenness but the taste of good wine and the joys it can bring.
“Director Ivan Calbérac is like us: he loves fine wines and cinema,” says Bernard Campan. He films his actors, the glasses and the bottles with the same greed. His gaze is very gentle and I believe that this is communicated through interposed screens. The jubilation that the characters find is infectious. “Even more than wine, the film is about sharing, the kind that spectators rediscover in a cinema and the pleasure we had in meeting after the pandemic, insists Isabelle Carré. These are feelings that everyone can relate to. »
The generosity of this beautiful story that mixes budding love, friendship and complicity does not intoxicate for a single moment. “We still drank a little Haut-Brion for one of the scenes,” admits Bernard Campan. Impossible to guess which one as the duo manages to make us experience the flavor of the wine at each tasting. We leave the room gently intoxicated, with the desire to share a good drink as a couple, with family or friends. A real one this time, in moderation.