The Movie "A Good Year", Provence, and Us

There are most probably two main reasons we have always wanted to come to Provence.....the book and TV series of "A Year In Provence", and the more recent movie "A Good Year"....both of these were written by Peter Mayle. With both the TV show and the movie we found ourselves always looking at the amazing scenery....so now we are finally here.

It is very hard to resist trying to find the beautiful locations that had seen, especially from the movie that just had amazing scenery.

So how well did we go? Pretty good actually we found lots of the locations, and we thoroughly enjoyed them. We did come back and add some photos to this post a couple of weeks after the initial one, just a little bit foggy the second visit.

One of the main locations was the beautiful village of Gordes...We first see it when Russell Crowe's character flies into Privence, interesting thing, there is no airport around here, so they either superimposed the aircraft into the shot, or hired a mad stunt flyer...I fancy the first option.

Early on in the movie Russell Crowe's character gets lost and is having problems with his GPS, well we found the intersection where he stops and phones his secretary....it is on the D3 just below Menerbes...a few of the signs are different, but I assure you it is the intersection.

We see Gordes again when Russell Crowe's character drives his Smart car in circles around a statue in the small village. Our photo was taken from a different angle.

Second Visit, Better Angle, Just A Little Bit Foggy

Gordes makes another appearance as the restaurant that Marion Cotillard's worked in, there were many scenes done in the small square with the fountain at the front of the restaurant.

The interesting thing is the restaurant in the movie is actually a real restaurant in Gordes, it is called Hotel le Renaissance, but it was not open the day we were there.

We also came across the house that Russell Crowe's character inherited, it is a real life chateau and winery called Château la Canorgue. We drove past it when we were heading to Bonnieux..it is just over a kilometre outside of the village. We took our photo of the chateau from the road as it is private property.

They also used the Chateaus real vineyards and did many shots showing the town of Lacoste in the background...if you look carefully between the two characters you can see the church spire in Lacoste as well as part of the town near the bald characters head.

They also used the small lake/pond in the village of Cucuron for the great scene with the restauurant, band and outdoor cinema.....guess what?.....No outdoor cinema ever happens here, but there are restaurants.

In the scene when Russell Crowe's character catches up with Abbie Cornish's character at the bus stop, it isn't a bus stop, it is actually the outdoor seating area for the Cafe de France in Lacoste, when we got there the cafe was closed for renovation work, and the weather a bit on the wet side....but a spectacular view across to valley to Bonnieux.

Cafe de France Outdoor Eating Area..Too Cold Today

So I think we can safely say that Provence is even more pretty and charming than what you see in the movie...and it was fun coming across the scenes used in the movie!

 

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