Author wept over Vintner's Luck film

The Vintner's Luck author Elizabeth Knox is upset by Niki Caro's film adaptation of her acclaimed book. Photo / NZ Listener

The Vintner's Luck author Elizabeth Knox is upset by Niki Caro's film adaptation of her acclaimed book.

Knox, who said she lay in bed and cried for days after seeing the film, is shocked at how much it departed from her story.

The film did have virtues, including its visual beauty and the actors' performances, "but I kept expecting the story that I'd written to happen," she told The Dominion Post.

Knox's book centres on a gay romance between an angel, Xas, and a French peasant winemaker, Sobran Jodeau.

Knox said Caro's film reduced the relationship to little more than the angel giving advice about wine.

"The film doesn't do the gay romance. It has a vague gay flirtation that amounts to nothing and it has quite a lot of heterosexual sex in it."

Knox said she wrote an email to Caro praising much of the movie but also calling it a "betrayal" for its treatment of the relationship.

She received a response that was polite, but a "great big cop-out", she said.

Knox said she would have been happy if Caro had ignored the tale and created a great new film, but that wasn't the case.

When contacted by The Dominion Post yesterday, Caro hung up and subsequently did not return phone messages.

The movie, which opened in New Zealand last week, has been roundly panned by reviewers here and overseas.

- NZPA