A bodice-ripping role in the Vintner's Luck

Vera Farmiga as Baroness Aurora. Photo / Supplied

Vera Farmiga was particularly looking forward to researching her role in The Vintner's Luck, not least because it involved a lot of wine-tasting. But her excuse to delve into the sommelier's world was dashed when, just a few weeks into production, she discovered she was pregnant.

Thrilled though she was, the news could not have come at a more difficult time. As the aristocratic and noble Baroness Aurora, her wardrobe consisted of waist-pinching, cleavage-thrusting corsets and gowns.

"The costumes became excruciating to wear," she says, on the line from New York. "Everything started inflating, rising. She had this really rigid, fashion-forward, avant-garde, heretical way of dressing, so they just became more excruciating the bigger I got."

Farmiga soon found ways to exploit her condition. Determined not to worry New Zealand director Niki Caro, whose own pregnancy had already delayed the shoot, she kept it a secret, "which was very akin to Aurora's secret".

Farmiga's character is an outsider in The Vintner's Luck, Caro's big-screen adaptation of Elizabeth Knox's popular novel that follows the life of a hard-working peasant named Sobran who gets wine-making tips from a fallen angel.

Surrounded by an earthy cast of randy grape-pickers, the educated Baroness is the film's black sheep. Driven by curiosity and a desire to make the most of her land, she proposes that she and Sobran go into the wine-making business together.

Impressed by her award-winning performance in Down to the Bone, and a stark photograph of Farmiga that appeared on the cover of the New York Times, Caro initially asked the actress to be a part of the film without specifying a role.

"She said, I really would love for you to be part of it, and when it happened, would you be available? And I said the only thing that would prevent me would be if I was pregnant," she laughs.

"The script read like an incredible, grand crew line and I wanted to be a part of it, with Niki at the helm. Since Whale Rider I've yearned to work with her. I thought it was the most beautiful, moving, powerful, magical film I'd ever seen. I'm someone who operates so much more from an emotional response to things, rather than operating from a cerebral standpoint. I initially thought Celeste [ played by Keisha Castle-Hughes] was the more obvious choice for me."

Aurora is a more complex role, brimming with repressed sexuality, grief and courage. But she's no angel. She finds herself not only drawn to the passion of his craft, tasting the toil and emotions in each drop, but the man himself. To put it plainly, she's the bit on the side who threatens Sobran's marriage to Celeste.

"Aurora for me is a metaphor for the grape in the film," says Farmiga. "She's something that starts off as a concept or an idea, a seed of a grape. There's something within her that prevents her from flowering, from producing, from feeling. And that happens to be right over her heart, in her breast, which becomes cancer. Once that is removed she is pruned in a way that allows her to grow, to have faith. She begins as a lady with absolutely no faith and at the end she learns what it means to have faith."

Does Farmiga have faith in the finished film? TimeOut film reviewer Peter Calder calls it disappointing. And when The Vintner's Luck debuted this year at the Toronto Film Festival, the heavenly glow of its red carpet launch was swiftly overshadowed by poor reviews from influential US film critics unable to get their heads around the white-winged creature and his homosexual affair with the vintner, and lambasting the epic storyline as "shambolic". The film charts two decades of a man's life so there are limitations but its ability to stimulate the senses is undeniable. And yes, it is sensual. There is a lot of sex.

"I have such a romantic association with the filming of this movie," says Farmiga, who admits she is yet to see it on a screen bigger than her laptop. "I love the message of the film which is to save a life. I'm someone who has an enormous devotion to growing things. Gardening is everything to me, as a food source, as art. Honestly, if I wasn't doing this I would go back to school and get a horticulture degree. It's the only way I deal with the stresses and the woes of my profession. When I have a victorious moment in life I buy a whole new set of perennials."

Some fans of the novel are concerned the film has strayed too far from the original story centred on the relationship between the vintner and the angel, whereas the film downplays the homosexual and theological themes in favour of Sobran's wine-making journey. How did Farmiga cope with fans' expectations?

"I didn't feel that pressure at all. The only pressure was to play the truth of my character which is that she is intellectual, she is all reason and rationale with very little sensual experience. And that does not a stellar vintner make. Wine-making is not a rational business."

Neither is film-making, much of the time. Farmiga's CV is artistically impressive but she has never been the Julia Roberts type.

Her characters don't ooze sassy confidence and sex appeal, but something more delicate and solemn. Partly, that is down to her appearance.

She has a face like an open book - eyes that are large and soulful, a long, noble nose. In many ways it's a vulnerable face but Farmiga's intelligence gives her strength on screen. It's ironic that those eyes were never very good at their day job.

"Some children want cats. I wanted spectacles. It was just a little pizzazz. I wanted glasses more than anything and I had ace vision. It's really the hardest thing I've ever prayed for in my life. For about a year, night and day, I prayed for myopia. And sure enough, the nurse calls me for a check-up, and I could not read the big E and my vision started deteriorating. At some point the novelty wore off and I started praying to reverse the curse, which never happened."

Thanks to the wonders of laser eye surgery, it never got in her way. After getting her start in theatre, in 1997 she scored a part in the TV series Roar, opposite a then-unknown Heath Ledger. She went on to play daughters of Christopher Walken in The Opportunists and Richard Gere in Autumn in New York, and in 2004 was named Best Actress at the Sundance Film Festival for her starring role in Down to the Bone, as a working-class, drug-addicted mother. Since then she has played a mental patient, a mobster's wife and a hooker. She graduated eventually from the unhinged characters to the more authoritative roles, most famous as a doctor in Martin Scorcese's The Departed.

So it's surprising in some ways - but also an acknowledgement of her growing mainstream appeal - that she was cast in Jason Reitman's upcoming Up in the Air, a romantic comedy with George Clooney and yet another Kiwi, Melanie Lynskey. Farmiga acknowledges she's not the obvious choice for a rom-com but says she's relishing the opportunity to have a bit of fun with a light-hearted script for a change. And it seems to have kick-started something. Her next project is the "zany, romantic comedy" Henry's Crime, with Keanu Reeves and James Caan.

"I know I'm not the first one you think of for romantic comedy. But it's nice, it gives me a chance to be silly.

It's really difficult to find a smart romantic-comedy. That's what I hold out for."

For now, she is "happier than ever" to juggle her career with motherhood. Son Fynn, now 9 months, is her biggest joy. And now that she's finished breast-feeding, there's room for another small pleasure in her life.

"Yes I'm pleased to report I've appropriated wine back into my routine."

Who: Vera Farmiga
What: The Vintner's Luck, opens today. See review page 10.
Past roles: Down to the Bone (2004); The Departed (2006); The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas (2008)