This delightful film is that rarest of beasts - a comedy that has bite and heart. Paul Giamatti plays Miles, an English teacher with pretentions to be a writer. A depressive on various medications, and still not over his divorce from Victoria, he embarks on a wine tasting week away with his best friend, Jack (Thomas Hayden Church), a faded actor who is about to get married to his much younger fiancee. Once in wine tasting country, Jack wants nothing more than to have a final shagathon, hooking up with a sexy vineyard owner (Sandra Oh). He also encourages Miles to take an interest in waitress Mia (Virginia Madsen). An eventful and surprising week away awaits...
A variation on the classic 'odd couple' scenario, Sideways benefits from a sharp script and two tremendous lead performances by Giamatti and Hayden Church as man child Jack. Miles is all nervy sarcasm, a more damaged variation of the Woody Allen archetype, a man who has all but given up on life and who, through his interest in wine tasting has become an alcoholic. Jack seems more together and is charming in a battered way but acts purely on instinct without any real thought of potential consequences. The pair are classic opposites, one too paralysed by thought to act while the other acts without thinking. The two play off each other well and really do feel like two old friends; much of the comedy comes from the differences between the two, the pair almost like an old married couple, sharing a room and bickering on the golf course. They share many hysterical moments, not least in a great sequence when, upon finding out that Victoria has remarried, Miles runs off down a hill, necking from a wine bottle furiously, while Jack tries to stop him, the pair ending up exhausted in a vineyard. The set piece where Miles has to retrieve Jack's wallet from the house of his latest conquest, from the room where she and her husband are currently having noisy sex is also comedy gold, especially as the naked husband then gives chase!
While Jack gets plenty of the film he is a fixed point, a child in an adult's body, and his role is to create problems that force Miles out of his comfort zone. In the end it is Miles' journey back from self-obsessive despair that is the heart of the film. The fragility of his confidence when Mia shows an interest in him is heartrending as are his fumbling attempts to respond to her advances. Giamatti's performance here is astounding and rightly put the actor straight to the top of most directors' wish lists. As Mia, Madsen holds her own well and the character is well written and rounded if a little too perfect. Sandra Oh has a blast as the last of the quartet, getting to break Jack's nose with her crash helmet when she discovers he's getting married at the end of the week! Finally, the scenery of California's wine growing region looks gorgeous and must have done wonders for the industry. Spending all day going from location to location sampling different wines in the sunshine seems like a very agreeable way to spend a week! Sideways is a smart comedy that has plenty of belly laughs but also much poignancy too. It remains director Alexander Payne's best movie. A thoroughly classic vintage.
GK Rating: ***** The Blog of Delights
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