Review: Blind Ambition is about four men who compete in a wine-tasting competition

3 stars

Underdog stories - both real and fictional - have long appealed to audiences. This is not hard to understand: it's a winning formula. Get a person or group of (often unlikely people) to face a challenge, let the audience get to know them as they face setbacks and accomplish goals and then see how they go when it comes to the main event.

Blind Ambition is a very likeable documentary that falls squarely into that category. Although it's about wine, even non-oenophiles (like me) can enjoy it.

Australian filmmakers Robert Coe and Warwick Ross previously collaborated on Red Obsession (2018), which dealt with the Chinese demand for Bordeaux wines. They made that subject accessible and interesting even for me, who couldn't tell you the difference between a chardonnay and a Riesling. It's not the subject, it's the way it's handled that really matters.

Coe and Ross - co-directors here - do a good job here on another wine-related subject, although there's much more of a human interest angle in this film, which like many good documentaries deals with much more than one subject.

We're introduced to four men from Zimbabwe - Joseph Dhafana, Tinashe Nyamudoka,, Marlvin Gwese, and Pardon Tagazu - who fled to South Africa as refugees during their homeland's economic and political crises to make better lives for themselves. Although they didn't know each other in Zimbabwe, they found each other in South Africa and bonded over their common experiences and a shared interest in wine, developed while working in quality restaurants as sommeliers.

As this suggests, they're not just quaffers, but seriously interested in all aspects of wine. Although their knowledge and experience was fairly late in developing - one of them, raised in a Pentecostal family, only had his first taste four years earlier - and their resources and access to wines are limited, they form a plan to become the first Zimbabwe team to compete in the the World Wide Blind Tasting Championships in Burgundy, France.

As you might expect, this is high-end, high-pressure stuff: 24 international teams taste six red and six white wines blind and must identify the grape variety, country, region, producer and vintage of each.

Not only will the trip be expensive - they need to raise several thousand pound - but they know they will need help to develop the skills necessary to compete at this level.

In South Africa, a coach, JV, helps them in friendly but firm fashion, but eventually has to leave to coach the South African team and they take on a new, French, coach who is a real character from a viewer's point of view but a decidedly mixed blessing for the men.

And then, inevitably, comes the big day.

Blind Ambition touches on many subjects - racism, poverty, and the white dominance of the wine world, to name a few - but the overall tone is upbeat and hopeful, focusing on the men's quest.

This might have worked better in a longer format, like a three-part TV series: too much of it seems rushed through, including the climactic event, and it would have been good to get to know the people better.

A lot of time is spent on (admittedly beautiful) panoramic shots and connecting footage that often feel like filler.

The comments from coaches, family, friends and industry observers help flesh things out but again, more of this material would have been welcome.

Although time is certainly spent on the men and their family backgrounds, more on this and on their relationships with each other and how they got to where they are would have been good to have.

The more we get to know the men - all of whom are engaging and have engrossing stories - the more our interest in barracking for them rises.

That they reached the status of sommeliers in such a short time and in such circumstances is remarkable and deserved more attention, and the brief postscript about what happened to the men also left me hankering for more details.

But it's still an inspirational and fascinating story. Perhaps a director's cut will add more?