Being a wine aficiando is certainly a little out of the league of most Americans. Of course, the movie portrays it being a little much for Miles too. He steals a great deal of money from his mother to cover the trip. (I lost track of his theft at around $500) Of course, most Americans are as unlikely to thieve from their elderly mother on her birthday as they are to have a sophisticated taste for wine. From Miles behavior in this movie, one senses there may be a connection there. .

             Their upper-class pretensions are not the only things which set Miles and Jack apart from the ordinary red-state American. Jack has a very loose morality, which seems to think it is not only all right but even a good idea to spend the last week before a marriage in chasing after women of all stripes. He carries on a short love affair with a single mother and even makes her promises about moving out to join her, and when she violently dumps him he proceeds to commit a rather gruesome adultery with a woman whose husband appears to take great pleasure in catching them together and chasing him naked through the streets. Most Americans would not run naked through an ostrich farm, to say the least. Though divorce is on the rise, and premarital sex rates are very high, we are not living in an era where it is generally accepted that one should sleep with as many women as possible right before a wedding. Miles, at least, seems to recognize this. He at least has the grace to have known his date socially (if even just as a customer at the restaurant where she works) for some time before going to her bed. In this respect, Miles is far more normal than Jack.

             Miles has his own oddities, however. He is deep in depression, and behaves in a rather melodramatic fashion. One assumes -- or at least hopes -- that the majority of Americans are not prone to walking into a wine-tasting session and dumping an entire spitoon of wine over their faces over a mere book rejection.