A portion of Helen’s big screen restaurant
Buy a flat or cottage at her chateau... with country club and a share of the vineyard
WITH the release of Helen Mirren’s new film, The Hundred-Foot Journey, cinemagoers are this weekend being transported to a quaint village in southern France. There Mirren’s icy restaurateur Madame Mallory does battle with an Indian family who have the affront to open a restaurant next to hers.
The scenes depicting Madame Mallory’s restaurant were shot at La Durantie, a belle epoque chateau where you can now buy holiday homes in the grounds.
Situated in the Tarn area of south-west France, the house is being transformed into a country club and spa, and new houses and apartments can be bought off-plan.
Buyers automatically belong to the country club, so they will be able to dine exactly where Madame Mallory holds court.
‘We’re keeping for posterity some of the changes the film crew made to the chateau,’ says Jeanne Boden, director of La Durantie.
The chateau was lived in by a couple in their 70s until last year, when it was bought for development. Jeanne – who is English but has lived in the Tarn for 17 years – was charged with transforming it. A few months later a location scout contacted Jeanne about her own home, to see if would be suitable for the film.
‘It wasn’t right but I was able to say, “Actually, I’ve got another one..,”’ she explains.
When they saw La Durantie, they knew instantly they had found their location and filming took place in October last year.
‘The weather was amazing,’ Jeanne says. ‘We often have lovely Indian summers.’
The film, based on a novel by American Richard C. Morais, is produced by Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg. The director, Lasse Hallstrom, has a track record of films about food and rural France – he directed Chocolat, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp.
Jeanne, 52, was even an extra in a scene when Helen Mirren serves drinks on Bastille Day. ‘The extras were mostly French and she was speaking French to them,’ Jeanne says.
La Durantie is close to the village of Castelnau-de-Montmiral amid a landscape of rolling hills, vineyards and ancient hilltop towns. Toulouse airport is 50 minutes away by car.
The house itself has seen several owners, including in the 1980s the Schwarzkopf family, famed for beauty products. Between the wars, nuns ran the estate, which in the 13th Century was part of a large landholding belonging to the Count of Toulouse. The country club will have a bistro, drawing room, library and two private dining rooms. There will also be 20-metre indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a spa, tennis courts, a croquet lawn, pitch and putt, a lake suitable for swimming, and outdoor dining terraces.
In the first phase, 57 detached houses with up to five bedrooms will be built in the grounds, together with apartments with two or three bedrooms. All properties will have individually designed back gardens and most will have a private pool. They are due to be completed next spring, and prices start from £266,000 for a two-bedroom home and rise to £625,000 for five bedrooms.
One couple who have bought off-plan are Helen and David Ponsford, from London. They both work in IT and had made many trips to the Riviera looking for the right holiday home but found prices too high.
But when Helen saw an advert for La Durantie, they flew out and bought a three-bedroom house for £393,000. Rental return was not a key reason for their purchase, but as La Durantie offers a ‘check-in and check-out’ service for rentals, the Ponsfords decided to put their home into the programme.
‘We were originally looking for a romantic, independent property before realising that a fully managed rental suits our lifestyles much better as we will be able to “lock up and leave” with no hassle,’ says Helen, 43. ‘We anticipate we might use our new home for a two-week summer holiday per year as well as numerous weekend breaks, and Christmas too.’
Meanwhile, vines are being reintroduced to the 15-hectare estate. From next year, owners will be invited to lease or buy a package of 50 vines, with custom labelling available.