Florida Film Festival 2013 movie review: ‘SOMM’

“SOMM” is a documentary about four young gentlemen all in the midst of attempting to pass the Master Sommelier’s Exam, a test established in the 1960s and which only about 200 people have ever passed, a test so hard that people have lost years of their lives to the devotion of all things wine just so they can have a dream of passing it. And if they can pass it, oh boy, do those doors of opportunity swing wide open for a certified Master Sommelier.

“SOMM” is an interesting combination of a mostly no-frills, just meat and potatoes documentary, and a much flashier, artier doc. It’s all footage of these four people, all in different places in their lives, all with very different personalities, all trying to help each other do the same thing, which involves lots of studying and wine tasting and the occasional shit talking, mixed with interviews of copious amounts of people involved in the wine industry, and this is all wrapped in a warm blanket of art, as we are treated to dreamy, slow-motion photography and a wonderful, jazzy cum classical score. I guess it makes plenty of sense to couple wine with jazz. They seem to go hand in hand.

And punctuating the opening of each little chapter of the movie are shots of wine glasses, filled with wine, and destroyed in increasingly violent intervals as the movie goes on, emphasizing the increasing tension of the film’s four subjects as they get closer and closer to this test that can only be taken once a year, and which logic and history and statistics dictate that there is pretty much no way possible that all four guys will pass this exam this time around. Or is there? (dun dun duuuun).

You know the term “crowd-pleasing?” That’s what “SOMM” just happens to be, a crowd-pleasing film. This measuring of audience pleasure was quite easy at the Florida Film Fest screening this past weekend, as the packed theater burst into applause during several different moments of the movie, and often reacted quite audibly, and most importantly, in unison. By the time the exam results were being revealed at the end, it was obvious that the film had everyone in attendance in the palm of its wine-stained hand, which resulted in much of the spontaneous aforementioned clapping and shit.

This is definitely a well made documentary, because they managed to tell the story of four wine nerds studying for a test to become certified wine snobs, and they focused on the right people and the right details and put it all together in a compelling way and made this into a great movie.