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Red Obsession

RED OBSESSION (Warwick Ross, David Roach). 80 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (September 27). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: NNN


For a movie about the centuries-old fixation on Bordeaux, Red Obsession spends an awful lot of time in China.

That’s because this pedestrian documentary is actually about something far less subjective and mysterious than why one region maintains such a hold on the collective palette it’s about the process of commodification and ostentatious displays of affluence.

Once the economic crisis made these wines too rich for American blood, the Chinese stepped in and quickly became the world’s largest consumers – or rather collectors – of Bordeaux, driving the already obscene prices to nauseating heights.

Narrated by Russell Crowe, presumably in the hope that oenophiles retain some affection for the actor’s performance in A Good Year, Red Obsession largely adheres to facile East-West binaries.

As generalizations go, depicting China’s 1 per cent as nouveaux riche preoccupied with the accumulation of status symbols may or may not be off the mark, but hardly feels like a revelation. And little in co-directors Warwick Ross and David Roach’s narrative is especially cinematic – though I did appreciate the witty cutaway to dildos plopping off an assembly line when it’s revealed that one of the most rabid buyers of Bordeaux made his fortune in sex toys.

Though not much of a movie, Red Obsession still serves as a sturdy case study in some of the myriad ways that unchecked capitalism kills culture.

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