Kenneth Branagh directed Peter's Friends in 1992, a well-recognized and well-remembered film that recounted the meeting of a group of friends in the manor house of one of them. Branagh created a school and now, 30 years later. The Frenchman Nicolas Vanier makes a very similar gesture and transfers the conflicts of friendship and the difficulties of a couple from the English countryside to the French vineyards in Champagne!, a film that reaches Spanish screens today.
Elsa Zylberstein, François-Xavier Demaison and Stéphane De Groodt star in this comedy whose starting point is Romane's (Zylberstein) invitation to his childhood friends to spend a weekend at his home in the Champagne region. She lives there with his wife and together they have just started a wine business. Jean (Demaison) and Guillaume (Eric Elmosnino) attend the appointment with their respective wives. The fourth lifelong friend of that group, Patrick (De Groodt), goes alone, because he is single, but for a short time, since he has a new girlfriend and plans to get married.
That girlfriend is the starting point of the conflict. Of a double conflict. On the one hand, the courtship has caused Patrick to distance himself from his colleagues because he spends more time with his fiancée. This annoys Guillaume who can't hide his anger with his friend. On the other hand, the girl, Christine, is younger than the rest of the group, a bit superficial and quite silly, which causes the women in the group to act somewhat cruelly and laugh at her.
"It is difficult to reach an already established group and be alone because the rest already have their habits, in addition, we all know the reaction that mature women have with respect to young women," Vanier explains in an interview with La Vanguardia. What reaction is that that everyone knows? "Everyone knows the answer... that husband's look at the younger, fresher woman. Women in their 50s or 60s envy 30-year-olds because they don't look as attractive as they do. It's a hot topic because many people, women and also men, undergo cosmetic surgery operations".
But Vanier's tape goes far beyond aesthetic considerations. The director has chosen "friendship" as the backdrop for his film, because it is not a calm river and I ask myself many questions about friends, in fact, I have a group in which situations occur similar to those that the spectators will see in Champagne!" The film also goes through the matter of love and its ups and downs: "It deals with close issues, friendship and couple relationships evolve because people change," adds the director,
Vanier is well known in France for his adventurer facet. On his trips, he has been able to see first-hand the fatal consequences that climate change causes in the environment and he wanted to convey it in his cinema. Champagne! It is a comedy, but even so, the director has included a character who wants to start a beekeeping business and is very aware of the situation of bees: "I do not intend to change the world, but the issue is very important to me who lives in communion with nature", concludes the filmmaker.
