Mondovio is a documentary about the state of the wine industry worldwide, that is funny, mean, a little sad, terribly shot, and excellently edited. It’s surprising in fact that something that so craftily reveals its story the way Mondovino does can suffer from such poor sound recording and camera-work. More amazing that despite the distractions of director Jonathan Nossiter seemingly trying to figure out how his camera’s zoom lens works while interviewing people, I can forgive him that because the rest of it is so well done and he tells the story so well.
The film starts off with an apparently simple story of some small independent vintners in France that successfully managed to fend off a buy-out from a huge American conglomerate. We also meet rather quickly, a rich, heavy, bearded, smoking wine consultant, on the phone non-stop in his car as he races from vineyard to vineyard tasting their wines and giving them all the exact same advice: “micro-oxygenate,” whatever that is.
So far, this is exactly what you’d expect in a documentary about the state of the wine industry worldwide, right? Of course. But for the next 2+ hours, Nossiter manages to almost constantly throw new wrinkles into his story. Continue reading Mondovino