A Christmas Tale (2008)

The Worst Film Ever

So much average

An absolute waste of money

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

...Not that it needed to, but if your movie is 2 hours 32 minutes long, then, well, I suppose something really interesting ought to develop. "A Christmas Tale" has an intriguing if well trodden premise - a family coming together for Christmas, to find the cancer-stricken mum a suitable bone marrow donor - but in spite of scenes which promise much, the whole movie doesn't really take off. People will argue that life is precisely that, very nonresolving and a series of tableaux, but the short cuts and staccato editing make this tale harder to enjoy than most. Not to mention so many issues which are left hanging in midair, other than the director nudging us "C'est la vie". You'd be hard pressed to understand why little gets developed to reach something of a climax.So the sister, at the end of the film, probably goes on hating his second brother without really understanding herself; the youngest brother allows his wife to sleep with his cousin, who had been carrying a torch for her over the years. That said, the acting all round is excellent, a well rehearsed cast including the ageless Catherine Deneuve, characters who are fleshed out decently, but who'd really remember a series of interminable scenes which doesn't exactly coalesce into an artistic whole? As an intimate family drama it's certainly too long at 152 minutes.

Today is Christmas Day, so it is the most apposite time to watch this French drama, rife with cancer, marrow transplant, siblings rivalry, unstable mentality, chronic depression, familial incest and distant mother-child relationship, very Christmasy! A follow-up of KINGS & QUEEN (2004, 6/10), French art house director Arnaud Desplechin concocts a fine potpourri of familial entanglements around the bourgeois Vuillard family, opens with a consequential animated preamble of the loss of their eldest son Joseph at the age of 6 due to a hereditary blood disease while no compatible marrow transplant is found in both parents, the daughter Elizabeth (Consigny) and the second son Henri (Amalric), who is conceived to offer a cure to his elder brother. But time goes on, a third son Ivan (Poupaud) is born, and now they are all grown-ups, then the matriarch Junon (Denueve) discovers that she suffers from the same disease, the only compatible donors are Henri and Elizabeth's son Paul (Berling), hence this Christmas, a family reunion is endowed with a more grave determinant, especially for the black sheep in the family Henri, after a 6-year banishment (due to an unspecified riff with Elizabeth), his return with his new Jewish girlfriend Faunia (Devos) will undoubtedly thrust the tension with Elizabeth's family and have an impact on Junon's final resolve to her impending treatment.Screen time is almost equally allotted to the all-star cast with their own stories intermingle in a short span of the time-line, although the main stream focuses on Henri and Junon's reconciliation, but it is not a beatific movie to bury the hatchet and embrace a pristine future, every family has its distinctive script written with plenitude of relatable interactions, notably, the mutual attraction between Ivan's wife Sylvia (played by Chiara Mastroianni, Denueve's real life daughter with Marcello Mastroianni) and Ivan's cousin Simon (Capelluto) clicks wonderfully in the latter part of the film, it is very French as well, for moralistic puritans and prudes, it is a sheer crevice in their convictions which will prompt harsh opprobrium. One trait of superfluity is the chunk of monologues, colloquies with staccato coherence, loose ends are all over the place, we can never decipher the real motivations and reasons behind certain behaviors which adhere to a particular terrain of mores; also the peephole shots introduces each chapter gives the film a stage structure and the occasional talk-to-the-camera shtick often comes out of nowhere, they may variegate the viewers' recipiency but are inconsistent in the plot development and engender some distractions hinder the appreciation. Amalric and Mastroianni are my pick among the ensemble, he is a true thespian with utter devotion while she bears her father's resemblance and an arresting existence whenever she is on screen. Devos is enjoyable as an unobtrusive intruder (reminds me to watch an Angela Basset film), Denueve is as distant as always, graceful but stereotyped, Poupaud is too damn good- looking for his shyness and benevolence and Consigny is perpetually frowned and distressed, enclosed in her own little world, one might feel too depressed to invest in her. In conclusion, it is not your average Christmas flick, but a less chic showpiece about kindred liaisons than Assayas' SUMMER HOURS (2008, 8/10).

Big, comfortable house in the provincial French town, white Christmas, family get-together. But, Vuillards are not an ordinary family. The iron willed mother is fighting cancer, but this is not a sentimental story. Bottled up emotions, seething resentments, unresolved issues. And it all explodes in three turbulent days. Cold mother, dotting father that keeps everything together, and four kids, ever present long gone Joseph(died of cancer as a child), Elizabeth( successful playwright, but deeply unhappy), Paul (the proverbial black sheep ,drinks too much to want to control himself), and the youngest Ivan, (handsome, but timid with the history of mental troubles). And there they go, with rituals, carols, Christmas movies, and rivers of booze, never really connecting. And in all of this lunacy there is an undertone of devotion and twisted loyalty. The ever so familiar story of families. The crippling inability to escape where it all started, the place that made us, the people who know us and can't be deceived. So, we come back drawn by the magnet of family bliss, only to be quickly reminded why we left in a first place. Smart, beautiful movie for patient movie lovers.

The film deals with death, but not in a morbid way. One of the queerest scenes involved Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon), Junon Vuillard's (Catherine Deneuve) husband, and Claude (Hippolyte Girardot), working the statistical chances of survival and the time left if Junon chose to have or not have a bone marrow transplant for her cancer. This is not something I could ever imagine happening anywhere else.Junon was so cool about the whole thing that you never really thought about the fact that she was dying.The entire family, sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, girlfriends, and others arrive at the family house to celebrate Christmas, each with their own funny and not-so-funny issues.The main issue working throughout the entire film is between brother and sister, Henri (Mathieu Amalric) and Elizabeth (Anne Consigny). Both actors were brilliant, and I am still not totally sure of the issues.There were other issues going on, and they are way too numerous to mention. The film deals with family and repentance, and forgiveness, among other issues.Arnaud Desplechin works like no other director I have seen and, while it may be distracting at times, it is never boring. The two and a half hours fly by.The children's Christmas play was hilarious, and dealt with the same themes.This was definitely one of the best films of 2008.