Reviewed - SIDEWAYSLike the fine wines sampled by the protagonists, this movie about men and merlot is a simple, seductive blend, writes Michael Dwyer
In Sideways, Alexander Payne pursues his preoccupation with men foundering as they find themselves cast adrift in the modern world, following on from Election, in which Matthew Broderick played an adulterous teacher, and About Schmidt, featuring Jack Nicholson as an insurance executive forced to cope with retirement and the death of his wife.
Played in an alert, subtly detailed performance by American Splendor star Paul Giamatti, Miles, the pivotal character in Sideways, has much in common with his creator, novelist Rex Pickett, being divorced, a wine connoisseur and a writer whose hopes of finding a publisher for a long-in-gestation novel are fading. Having toiled on various unfilmed screenplays before writing an Oscar-winning 1999 short, Pickett received over 30 rejection letters for an earlier attempt at a novel before Sideways found a publisher.
Adapting Pickett's novel with his regular screenwriting collaborator Jim Taylor, Payne has fashioned another literate, curious and dryly humorous picture of self-discovery. Miles has agreed to be best man at the wedding of his best friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church), a minor actor, and, with a week to go before the ceremony, they take a trip to the vineyards of the Santa Ynez Valley in California.
In his quest for the perfect pinot, Miles is appalled at Jack's philistine approach to wine - he even chews gum at a tasting - and at Jack's agenda for philandering in the week before he weds, and their journey brings them into close contact with two smart women - a waitress (Virginia Madsen, never better) and a wine taster (Sandra Oh, who is married to Payne) - who know a lot about men and about wine.
Payne directs with the same deceptive simplicity he brought to bear on his earlier films, seductively opening out the story with a rhythm counterpointed in Rolfe Kent's breezy, lounge music score, which would not seem out of place on the soundtrack of a superior 1960s TV sitcom.
Observing his characters with a quizzical eye, Payne treats them with sympathy and compassion as he reveals all their many flaws and insecurities on this episodic journey from one Saturday to the next, as the two men, in particular, are forced to re-think their values and priorities in life. The consequences are consistently diverting and disarming, and played out with subtle, telling conviction by the central quartet of actors in a movie that is, just like a vintage pinot, a pleasure to savour from beginning to end.
