Christmas a Complex Holiday Tale Worth the Struggle
Junon Vuillard (Catherine Deneuve) is sick. Her loving husband Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon) is worried about his wife, not so much by the nature of the illness but because he doesn’t know if she’s actually going to do anything about it.
The great Catherine Deneuve in IFC Films' A Christmas Tale
The entire Vuillard clan is getting tested to see if their bone marrow can potentially help. Elizabeth (Anne Consigny), an acclaimed playwright and the oldest child, has learned her troubled son Paul (Emile Berling) is a match. But so is the marrow of self-destructive black sheep Henri (Mathieu Amalric), and even though she banished him from the family five years earlier the melancholy writer can’t exactly keep him away from the Christmas holiday with Mom's life in limbo.
Soon all of them are spending the week back inside the family home, including even-tempered youngest sibling Ivan (Melvil Poupaud), his beautiful wife Sylvia (Chiara Mastroianni), their two children Basile (Thomas Obled) and Baptiste (Clément Obled), Henri’s Jewish girlfriend Faunia (Emmanuelle Devos) and lovesick professional artist cousin Simon (Laurent Capelluto). Over the course of the holiday they will bicker, fight, make up, backstab, scream, yell, hug, kiss, eat, drink, smoke and feud themselves into near oblivion, the ghosts of family members past haunting them to make decisions which may change their lives forever.
Director Arnaud Desplechin’s (Kings & Queen) latest comedic drama A Christmas Tale is all over the place, shifting tones and points of view so frequently it’s almost impossible to keep up with who is doing what and why and whether or not it matters in the grand scheme of things. On top of that, for most of the time the Vuillards are completely detestable, their interconnecting melodramas making me so crazily unhinged I almost wanted to scream.
Yet as the film progresses these multifarious layers of dramatic ennui and vitriol becomes absolutely intoxicating, and before I knew it my eyes were glued to the screen and I almost couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen next. More than that, as things finally started spiraling towards their emotional apex I honestly didn’t know what the actual outcome was going to be, the choices Junon, Elizabeth, Paul, Henri and all the rest of them had before them ones I could hardly fathom let alone anticipate.
Desplechin and Emmanuel Bourdieu’s (My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument) complicated and highly intricate screenplay has so many ups, downs and devastatingly provocative in-betweens I almost don’t even know where to begin. Sometimes I could relate to what was happening onscreen, other times (like Elizabeth’s frustrating inability to give Henri a chance to prove he’s changed) I sat their rolling my eyes trying to comprehend how such intelligently rational people could be so rigidly idiotic. The contrasts between them all are almost night and day, so when the cracks begin to show and the commonalities make themselves known it’s near impossible to believe such a crazy group of opposites could ever be related.
It is the off-screen death of the eldest brother, Joseph, which haunts them. None of them knew him, not really even the parents, yet his tragic loss to leukemia keeps them all in a constant state of unknowing panic coloring every single aspect of their frigidly fraying personal lives. Yet somehow they all still manage, if only in their own simple ways, to rise far above this fear, at times even leave it in the dust, yet all the while the darkest depths of their subconscious wondering if they – or maybe one of their children – might be next to be buried under the earth in an all too early grave.
The acting is stellar. From top to bottom, everyone knocks this so clearly out of park it is almost awe inspiring. Of them all, Deneuve, Consigny, Mastroianni, Devos and especially Amalric (last seen giving Bond a drubbing with a fire axe in Quantum of Solace) are the ones who make the deepest impressions. But even singling them out above the rest almost feels remiss, the entire cast working in such impressive tandem no other ensemble this year has made quite the same impression.
Yet I can’t help but wondering what the point of all this is. Some have said that Desplechin has made some sort of gloriously complex commentary on the state of family, or that his film is a monumental metaphor to forgiveness and regret. Personally, while I see those themes as being present I’m not entirely sure I agree. The film wallows in pain and suffering for so much of its running time I almost felt pummeled by it, while the almost unrelenting indifference on display by a couple of the characters drove me so thoroughly nuts I felt I was on the verge of insanity.
Even so, A Christmas Tale is well worth searching out. Discriminating viewers are going to find much to ruminate over and dissect, the level of passion and intelligence that has been woven into the finished project so beyond compare I almost feel remiss in pointing out the areas where I find fault. The movie is a one-of-a-kind experience, and the more I think about it the more I can’t wait to watch the darn thing again.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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