The bucolic opening sequence to The Hunger Games makes the dystopic Panem State seem homely; a place where you can stitch a quilt, or share a venison kill with your neighbours. We get to see a happy hearth, furnished with neatly tooled Shaker tables and chairs; then the film drowns us in unfairness.
AC Bordeaux’s rustic mise-en-scène hides its own catalogue of woes: vine-swept vistas and comatose stone villages to the forefront; behind, desolation, rural poverty and political cynicism. An inauspicious alliance between co-operatives and supermarkets has caught the majority of Aquitaine’s wine producers in a doom spiral of low prices and depressed wages.
In Panem, exploitation benefits the Capitol’s apex leisure class. The only way of escaping the oppressed outer districts is the games in the title: a fight-to-the-death entertainment show where the surviving combatants get the chance to live among their outré overlords.
The combatants are selected from the districts by raffle, whereas in Bordeaux the separation of the haves from the have nots is largely determined by Le Classement. Whether you’re in the money or Monoprix is largely determined by the postcode of your inheritance.
The situation in Burgundy is more fluid. Escaping the négociants’ vats has been propitious, but only if your holdings already included a hefty balance of Premier and Grand Cru vineyards. Over recent decades, the number of autonomous domaines has multiplied and revenues have increased. In the last century, we all applauded the little guys who defied the périphérique Goliaths and began bottling
