I bumped into an “old friend” yesterday—my copy of The Vintner’s Luck, and I remembered that there was going to be a film version of it. I did some research about the movie, and here are some of the things that I discovered:
1. A picture of Gaspard Ulliel as the Angel Xas:

Is this from the scene where he says, “My name is Xas. Like spit and vinegar—sass. X-A-S. I’m of the lowest of the nine orders. Unmentioned in Scripture or Apocrypha”?
2. The film was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, and Gaspard Ulliel was there. (And to think that I was actually plotting to visit our beloved Inay María in Brampton that month!)
3. The Angel Xas—the hero of the book—has practically no part in the film, and the forbidden (homoerotic) love affair between him and Sobran the vintner—the central theme and the actual soul of the novel—is only “suggested” in the script.
I love Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha and Gabriel García Márquez’ El amor en los tiempos del cólera, but I vowed never to see their awful film versions. I think I don’t like to see The Vintner’s Luck movie too.