Keswick Film Club - Reviews - From The Vine

Most of the interesting and rewarding films seem to be about serious stuff, so the films you remember are probably the most bleak and heart-rending. But come Christmas who wants their heart rended – much better is a helping of comfort food.

'From the Vine', shown at the Keswick Film Club on Sunday, certainly won't disturb your heart – it barely has a pulse – and had all the components of a good mindless couple of hours. Unfortunately all these pieces were put together in very random way without much thought for script, acting or story.

In theory everything was there – middle-aged man thinking about the meaning of life, warm Italian countryside, comic locals, doubting wife and daughter, an ending where everyone is happy. But our hero, delivering his big speech before heading off to a better life, doesn't give us a personal epiphany or a searing critique of big business, but gives us ... silence, and the suspicion that he's forgotten which film he's in. The warm Italian countryside seems to have been filmed on a particularly overcast day, drained and colourless, and the locals are certainly comic but shown in a patronising, borderline racist way. The wife and daughter come from that school of acting where you are taught to shout in a grating voice rather than have real conversations. And the ending?

Well, everyone was happy because it all worked out of course, but it was hard to see what had actually worked out. But hey, it's Christmas, the season of good cheer and bad films. And it's odds on that you'll watch a worse film than this in the next two weeks.