Barbe-Nicole Pomardin-Clicquot’s widowhood lasted for more than 60 years. Thomas Napper’s WIDOW CLICQUOT focuses on 10 of those years, when this young, dreamy yet energetic woman fought to save her inherited winery. And there are flashbacks to the short marriage with François Clicquot, to whom she was connected to not only by an ordinary love but also by a strangely esoteric love of wine. She remains faithful to Napper, who died in 1805 of typhus or madness, no one knows for sure - in wine or champagne. Barbe, played by Haley Bennett, perseveres, sometimes gracefully in an empire dress, but also so sternly in widow's black that one can certainly believe (and praise goes to the make-up department) that she could become the matron that Veuve Clicquot is portrayed as in a painting. Brave Barbe resolutely faces all kinds of adversities such as wet and frosty weather, trade restrictions that prevent her from reaching important customers in the Tsarist Empire, and resistant men. It is hard to believe that she is as capable of being a pioneer of feminism as the film suggests, or even a propagandist of flat hierarchies. Incidentally, her most important invention, the champagne-related shaking table, does not appear. So we unfortunately do not see Bennett shaking bottles, but rather - always perfectly lit, accompanied by soft violin sounds, sometimes with, sometimes without a blue winemaker's apron - how she politely folds napkins, thinks about wine types and fermentation dates, or polishes sparkling glasses to a high shine in the candlelight. It is not really all that exciting. At least the film ends surprisingly beautifully and strongly: when the first salesman and brief lover proposes marriage to her in public, she answers - NO.

Elisabeth Bauschmid (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy