I was surprised the other day to receive a copy of A Good Year: A Portrait of the Film (Newmarket Press, 304 pages, $13.95, ISBN 0.307.27775.5), not because it is unusual to receive books in the mail, but because I didn’t know that there was a movie called A Good Year coming out.

The film turns out to be Ridley Scott’s adaptation of a novel by Provencal specialist Peter Mayle. The book doesn’t contain the script, but rather what is advertised as excerpts from the script, which in fact turn out to be really no more than pull quotes from the movie.

Though I haven’t seen A Good Year I decided to review the book anyway. There is a simple reason for that. I wanted to see if a seemingly lighthearted Scott film would pull my heart strings.

I admit it. I’m a sap. There is something about love stories that can really get to me. There are several occasions where I have actually gotten weepy eyed over romantic comedies, and not even the movie version, but just the script. One was Nothing Hill, which I read in paperback book form before seeing the film. Another was the first version of what became The Wedding Planer, but was called Mary Me Jane when I read it. I actually got tears in my eyes as I read the thing. Unfortunately, that version was utterly changed, though the resultant film was a huge hit. Nevertheless, consequently I have determined that I am the perfect market research tool for romances. If even the written version can unleash the waterworks, there must be something in it.

So I placed A Good Year: Portrait of the Film, with an introduction by Scott and Mayle, on the desk before me and studied it. The cover shows an image of star Russell Crowe, his face covered in dappled golden light, out of focus foliage behind him. Crowe is smiling, and looking down, and his white shirt suggests casualness. So we have something new, or at least newish, here — a happy Crowe rather than the brooding, brutal, brutish Crowe of tabloid stories and previous movies. The close up appears to emphasize the change, wagging its hands and jumping up and down to say, “New Crowe, new Crowe!”

I open the cover of the slightly oversized book, and see — another image of Crowe, one that looks almost exactly like the cover image, but looking left to right. It’s clear that the publicity for the film is built this sea change in Crowe’s persona.

The subsequent book is divided into three parts. The first section is the product of interviews with both Scott and Mayle, who, it turns out, were old friends, back when both were in advertising, and before Scott became a world famous movie director and Mayle bailed from that world and began writing novels and memoirs of his life in souther France. Although the book no where makes this clear, A Good Year turns out to be a remake of A Year in Provence, already adapted to the screen, as a TV mini-series, in 1993.

The bulk of the book tells the story of the film, copiously illustrated with color stills. The final section contains “making of” stuff that essentially reads like press kit material.

The middle section is the book has an interesting affect. It comes across like a kids’ storybook, amply illustrated, surrounded by a nice big typeface and lots of white around the text. Here the tale of the film is laid out. It concerns a London trader named Max Skinner, played by Crowe, who inherits a winery from his uncle (played by Albert Finney). Traveling to Provence to liquidate the estate, he ends up staying for several weeks, meeting an attractive local woman who runs a restaurant, and dealing with both the surviving land manager and the young American woman who turns out to be the uncle’s rightful heir.

The thrust of the film is that Skinner must change. He must drop the high pressure world of finance and investment gambling for the more lackadaisical but soul replenishing pace of country life. This change must come about, in classic screwball manner, though his ritual humiliation. The movie’s charge is to alert us to be patient, that Skinner will change, and grow to accept this new way of living.

The storybook got to me at two points. One was when Skinner, in an attempt to woo the restauranteur, says he will work one night when she happens to be short handed if she will have dinner with him. Later, when he comes back from London, he surprises her and says something that on the page sounded very romantic but could be laughable out loud if Crowe doesn’t manage to say it right. I expect that he will. But don’t try it at home. Both moments started the waterworks, and I thought that, despite what might be its flaws of low comedy and sentimentality, the film might just work. At least it did on paper.

As I was reading the storybook part, it occurred to me that this might be the best way to present scripts to actors (especially if the story about Jessica Simpson is true). It reads fast, hits all the high points, manages not to leave anything out (I assume), and is amply illustrated (there would surely be a way to PhotoShop a prospective actor into the director and production designer’s vision). Reading it takes about half as long to do as the film itself would last, and weaves its magic quickly, without all the impedimenta of classic screenplay formating.

By this point, I was curious: Who wrote this thing? No author is credited on the cover or the title page. But buried on the last page of the book where its credits are listed, the book’s editing is credited to Diana Landau, who is a movie book project manager at Newmarket Press. I assume than that she wrote the text. If so, she might like to consider a career in treatment writing for recalcitrant readers. Her work could effectively change the way movies are made.

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