FROM FRANCE and UNITED STATES

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: Anselme Selosse and his family are heritage winemakers and growers for Jacques Selosse, a small but critically acclaimed vineyard producer in the Champagne region. Each harvest season, they have a flock of laborers come in to pick the grapes. Some of the men have been coming to the vineyard in for a quarter-century, and have become a sort of distant family. “Vas-y Coupe!” follows the laborers along with the Selasses, as they rise to the challenge of blight in the grapes and a need to restructure the practices to fit with the contemporary world, both at the harvesting and after it. The stark contrast between the lives of the winemakers and the laborers becomes an illuminating insight into the social and economic disparities inherent to France’s class structure.

WHO MADE IT: American Laura Naylor is not a newcomer: she has two feature documentaries behind her, “Duck Beach to Eternity” about a Mormon singles gathering and “The Fix” about ex-heroin addicts in the Bronx. She also made an animated short “Bartleby,” based on the Henry Melville short story, in collaboration with Kristen Kee. The wine producer at the center of Naylor’s film, Jacques Selosse, has been one of the leading winemakers of the Champagne region for over half a century, despite their small output. Jacque’s son Anselme Selosse is now in charge, and he runs the business along with his wife Corinne and son Guillaume, who is expected to take over in the future. In addition to the vineyards, the family runs an inn adjacent to their property in the Avize region. While Jacques Selosse wines are available in retail, each bottle will set you back a couple of hundred dollars, at least. The seasonal laborers featured in the film include the three most memorable figures: a younger man Miguel Delhaye, a tender father Samuel Delhaye and Michel Waret, who seems to have an extra-special relationship with the family. They all hail from Guise, a commune in the Aisne department in Northern France.

WHY DO WE CARE: An interesting piece of trivia that I discovered while preparing to write about “Vas-y Coupe!” is that Guise, the home of the film’s seasonal workers, is a remarkable locale in France’s labor history. In 1856, French industrialist Jean-Baptiste Godin heavily influenced by the writings of early socialist Charles Fourier, set up his Familiestère right nearby. It was a pioneering project that served to improve housing and services for the workers at his cast-iron manufacture—a utopian socialist enterprise that began right after the revolution and pre-dated the publication of “Capital.” Once Godin retired, he transferred the proprietorship of Familestère to a worker co-op. The communal project was in operation, with some discrepancies, for the next century, until the co-op was dissolved in the 1960s. In the 21st century, Familestère was made into a museum. While not connected factually to the plot of the film in any way, the history of Familestère makes for an excellent backdrop for the events in “Vas-y Coupe!” When the Selosse family welcomes the laborers for the season, they become engaged in a particular process, where the workers are not merely hired hands, but also guests, and therefore should be provided with room and board. And this is where the cultural divergence figures most. Instead of merely being provided with the necessities, the laborers are dined, wined, entertained, and even allowed space to get drunk and dance to “Despacito” in blissful abandon. This very warm and humane approach to hired labor is surprising when viewed through the prism of the American well-oiled capitalist machine that runs on austerity and measured incentives.