Sometimes, it is okay to put on a movie you know will not make you think too hard.  Since I did not get good sleep last night, that was as far as my thinking went when choosing A Perfect Pairing (2022).  It is a romantic comedy, so fill in all the expected beats.  It is also about wine, or at least that is what the title suggests, which is a subject about which I know little.  I cannot say it gave this teetotaler any revelations on that matter, but I did realize that it is pretty easy to spot one of these Netflix movies that is filmed entirely in Australia but set partially in the United States.  Sadly, there is no mention of Catholicism, which might seem like a non-sequitur (despite The Legionnaire being a Catholic movie review blog) but for the fact it is the largest Christian denomination in the country.  Netflix made a lot of these films but they never seem to mention this aspect of Australian culture.  At any rate, today’s film does a fair job, I suppose, with the rest, so let me tell you about it.

The thing that wine executive Lola Alvarez (Victoria Justice) is being told about at the beginning of A Perfect Pairing is how celebrity chef Hamish (Nicholas Brown) would love the importing company for which she works to bring him the spirits made by Vaughn wineries.  Vaughn is an up-and-coming label and Lola being able to take in that business would mean a certain promotion.  She shares her enthusiasm with her co-worker and friend Audra (Lucy Durack).  Audra, though, has a warning about their mercurial boss Calder (Craig Horner), who is seemingly never pleased with Lola despite her hard work.  Audra shares the trepidation, and thus when Lola gets to the office the next morning, it is Audra pitching Vaughn wineries instead of Lola.  For once, Calder is satisfied and proclaims that there will be a raise in pay and status for Audra upon her landing the contract.  Lola voices her betrayal privately to Calder but it goes ignored.  Instead of fighting, Lola quits, daring Calder to find anyone as dedicated as her as she leaves.  With some encouragement from her father, Carlos Alvarez (Antonio Alvarez), she decides to start her own importing company.  He also suggests that she go after Vaughn, which would be a major boost to her start-up.  There is only one catch about this proposition: the Vaughn wineries are in Australia.  Still, such is Lola’s determination that she books an AirBnB near owner Hazel Vaughn’s (Samantha Tolj) headquarters in order to press the grower into signing with her.  Upon her arrival, she wanders into Hazel’s well-appointed home thinking it is her accommodations, but she is stopped by Max Vaughn (Adam Demos).  There is no way of not spoiling this, but it must be noted that Max introduces himself by his first name.  For now, the only thing Lola knows is that he is there to firmly guide her to where he thinks she should be, not to where she wants.  Her desire is to immediately talk with Hazel, but he says that it is not a good idea.  Ignoring this advice, Lola spots Hazel and boldly walks up to her target.  Hazel rather imperiously declines Lola’s offer, but the latter insists by asking if there is anything she can do to change Hazel’s mind.  It is decided that Lola will work for two weeks on the adjacent sheep farm, which they have because, I guess, Australia?  At the end of a fortnight, Hazel will listen to Lola’s proposal.  Lola has no experience with such work, and to Max’s slight annoyance, Hazel orders him to directly train the newcomer.  Okay, you have the main character, the guy, and the setting.  Do I need to describe much more?  Throughout the inevitable silliness of the fish-out-of-water on a sheep farm antics, Max falls for Lola’s stick-to-itiveness, while she is attracted by his Australian manliness?  I do not know what else to say because he says little about himself, but is polite about it.  As mentioned earlier, he does not want to reveal his true identity, preferring to handle the sheep business instead of running the more profitable wine enterprise.  It has something to do with how he acted out when he was younger, not being there for his mother when she died.  Despite Hazel’s encouragement to take over, and to reveal the truth to Lola, he keeps to his anonymity.  It is not until they are finally romantic that Max tells Lola about his heritage.  I am not sure why she is upset about this, though she says it is because he had been dishonest and she had been trying to get the Vaughn business.  They return from their rough interlude to find Hazel with Audra and Calder, with Hazel giving the Vaughn contract to Mythos.  It is at this point that she decides her time in Australia has come to an end.  Max attempts an apology, which seems to go okay, but he does not fight for her.  Even this single Catholic guy knew better in that moment.  Still, I guess it is more dramatic that he comes to Los Angeles a few months later after Lola has forgiven Audra and brought the former betrayer to the new company, promoted when Vaughn drops Mythos.  With Audra and Lola presenting at some kind of conference, he arrives to sweep her off her feet and back to Australia, where the film comes to an end.

The final scene in A Perfect Pairing is a wedding, but we will not get into that for Catholic reasons.  It is between a few of the secondary characters that are there to flesh out the Australian-ness of the setting.  Indeed, there is not much in terms of Christian ideas onto which this review can latch.  I will say that the Church did keep alive drinking culture in Europe throughout much of history.  It is tenuous, but it is somewhat of a connection.  Then again, almost anything I could say about the movie from a Catholic perspective is tenuous.  Speaking of which, I was not expecting so much time to be spent on wool production.  It is fine because, as I said in the introduction, I am no expert on wine.  Then again, I am also unaware of the particulars of sheep farming.  The same can be said for Lola, but she is following her calling and doing what is required to achieve her goals.  It is a corporate attitude, but it has a Catholic parallel.  Whenever I encounter someone taking a risk to pursue their dreams (which is another way of saying calling or vocation), I often think of a nun I heard once describe what it means to take that spiritual leap to enter religious life.  She describes it as jumping off a cliff.  You have to trust that Someone is going to be there to catch you.  You are also never going to get to the point you are trying to reach unless you take that leap.  It would have been easy for Lola to stay at Mythos, grinding away for little appreciation or reward.  Indeed, there is nothing wrong with not doing so under certain circumstances.  God blesses the one who is content to simply do their job.  What complicates Lola’s situation is her awful boss.  Between that and her entrepreneurial spirit, she puts her trust in her God-given abilities to achieve the kind of life that, as she puts it in her clichéd way, “feels right.”  That may be cliché, but there is truth in it.  God speaks to everyone in His own way, and He can use those feelings to nudge you in the direction He feels is best for you.  I posit that this is not an unreasonable way of thinking about what you see in today’s film.

Then again, you have probably already seen something like A Perfect Pairing.  One thing it does not do is try to reinvent the genre, and that is fine.  It handles everything in a competent, and inoffensive manner in every sense of the term.