Robert De Niro's Tribeca nod to Aussie film Red Obsession

As cinematic adventure stories go, this one has the lot. Russell Crowe, Robert De Niro, and an idea sparked on a flight from Sydney to London which led to a 14-month project across two continents.

The result: a rip-roaring documentary tale of power, greed, vanity, lust and the wine world.

And the backdrop to all this? The beguiling, fairytale land of the la las – Lafite-Rothschild, Latour, La Mission, La Louviere, Lagrange, Lagune – otherwise known as Bordeaux.

Red Obsession, by Warwick Ross, a filmmaker and wine producer based in Sydney and the Mornington Peninsula, explores the Chinese passion for Bordeaux. He stumbled on the idea at 32,000 feet after an encounter with Sydney wine auctioneer Andrew Caillard, master of wine, in mid-2010. He says he knew he had a good story because it kept changing, becoming more layered and complex the longer he, Caillard and fellow filmmaker, David Roach, pursued it.

The 79-minute documentary explores the Chinese passion not only for the cabernet-based wines of Bordeaux but increasingly the bricks and mortar of its famous chateaus. Chinese investors have acquired about 40 of the region's wine properties in the past decade, including at least one grand cru producer, Chateau Bellefont-Belcier.

China is Bordeaux's biggest market but also home to the fastest growing wine industry in the world, leading to the tantalising notion that Bordeaux's biggest client is about to become its biggest competitor.

The resulting clash of East meets West would have provided Shakespeare with rich pickings for a tasty morality piece.

Ross injected $1 million of his money into the project. He was rewarded when the film caught the eye of actor Robert De Niro who declared the film "wonderful" after a showing of Red Obsession at his Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

"To schmooze with him at the wrap party was pretty cool," says Ross.

It's not easy making a documentary involving wine. Who wants to look at people staring dreamingly into wine glasses for 90 minutes? The 2004 doco, Mondovino, pitching the small wine man against the might of corporations, was successful but controversial for its portrait of some of the world's most powerful wine men as villains.

When Ross and the Red Obsession team approached some of the same people to go on camera, they refused.

It could have been a big stumbling block. "We had to develop some trust," says Ross, who, as a wine producer, would have had some empathy with his subjects. "The more times we went back, the more we were trusted."

What was originally to be three visits to Bordeaux turned into five. Eventually the team interviewed the main players in Bordeaux, including the elusive Prince Robert of Luxembourg, owner of Chateau Haut-Brion, and Frederic Engerer, head of Latour, who held out for six months before agreeing to appear.

Ross roped in Russell Crowe as narrator.

The documentary centres on en primeur week in Bordeaux in 2011, wine's version of Fashion Week where buyers and commentators assess the current vintage (in this case, 2010) and make judgments about quality, whether it is worth buying before release and importantly, at what price.

In 2009, the global financial crisis was hurting in Europe and the US but in stepped the Chinese, sending en primeur prices of the 2008 Bordeaux vintage into the record books.

It helped that Robert Parker, whom the Chinese also obsess about, gave top scores to 2008 wines, including Lafite-Rothschild and Petrus.

In 2010, the Chinese remained cool on the '09s. What would they do in 2011 with the 2010 vintage, lauded, by some, as the vintage of the century? That's what Ross went to capture.

He also went to explore the attitude of the French towards the growing influence of the Chinese. Was there prejudice or acceptance?

"Frederic Engerer," says Ross, "was the one who gave us the best answer when he said, 'We have to remain an open society so yes, Chinese people should come and buy chateaux in Bordeaux and see what it's like to make wine. It's not as easy as you think and if they bring passion as well as renminbi, then great'."

The attitude of the Chinese to the French was also covered. Why the red hot fever for top Bordeaux wines? What's behind the fascination for not only the wines but buying into the region? Is it, as is often claimed, to export all production to China for a growing middle class, estimated to reach 475 million by 2030?

"One thing we look at in the film is the effect of the Cultural Revolution on the attitude of the Chinese," says Ross. "From 1949 to 1979 they were effectively divorced from their cultural roots so when they came out the other end they wanted everything the West had.

"It's naive but it's a naivety born out of that political situation."

At screenings of Red Obsession in Bordeaux it was reported chateau owners were impressed by the quality of the production and photography showing their chateaus never looking more beautiful.

Ross is chuffed. As a feature filmmaker he has made films only for the cinema (Young Einstein, Reckless Kelly). So with the documentary he used some of the world's best digital movie-making cameras. One aerial shot of Chateau Margaux, claimed to be the most evocative in the whole documentary, almost didn't happen because it took five hours to attach the camera to the nose of their helicopter, leaving only 45 minutes of light left for filming.

Some post-screening critiques have suggested Red Obsession is looking out of date. A lot has happened since the 2011 en primeur season but I suspect the essence of the film is as important today as two years ago. The Chinese affair with Bordeaux remains as hot and passionate as ever.

*Red Obsession will be screened during the Melbourne Film Festival on August 3 and August 5 before its scheduled general release on August 15.