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"French Kiss" (1995)
Director: Lawrence Kasdan. Cast: Meg Ryan, Kevin Kline, Timothy Hutton.
Kline won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in "A Fish Called Wanda," but he's even better in this romantic comedy as the prodigal son of a French family of vineyard owners. Not only does he hit all the right romantic and comedic notes; to this American, he's astonishingly convincing as a Frenchman, right down to the Gallic gestures of disinterest and disdain.
Soon after Kline meets Ryan, he sneaks a grapevine into her bag to bring into France. Why he needs to smuggle a grapevine from Canada into France is never explained, but the rest of the film's take on wine is so accurate -- and so loving -- that this oddity can be forgiven.
Ryan is a repressed, lactose-intolerant North American who flies to France to pursue her fiance Hutton, who has called her from Paris to announce that he met somebody else and is breaking their engagement. She soon finds herself stranded in France, and Kline, with ulterior motives, announces that he will help her win Hutton back.
There may not be a better, more poetic description of the concept of terroir than the following exchange between Ryan and Kline.
Ryan: "A bold wine with a hint of sophistication and lacking in pretension. (Pause.) Actually I was just talking about myself."
Kline: "You are not wrong. Wine is like people. The wine takes all the influences in life all around it, it absorbs them and it gets its personality."
Kline also teaches her how to smell different aspects of a wine's aroma, using a kit he created with dried rosemary, lavender and cassis. Kline and Ryan have good chemistry, and this film seems more charming now then upon its release. The French country vineyard lifestyle has never looked this romantic on the American screen.
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