A Christmas Tale: Movie Review (2008)

Directed by Arnaud Desplechin, written by Desplechin and Emmanual Bourdieu, 150 minutes, not rated. In French with English subtitles.

Here’s a tip for those who have seen the festive trailer for the new Arnaud Desplechin movie, “A Christmas Tale,” and might, upon viewing it, be expecting something light. Don’t. The trailer is as misleading as that old holiday trick--the large wrapped box tucked beneath the Christmas tree that features something smaller and, in some cases, more disappointing inside.

Nobody should come to this movie expecting whimsy. There is no exalting in the heralding of the holidays here (which would be fine if the movie wasn’t selling itself as such). Nobody should expect joy--at least not the traditional sort. There is joy here, but usually it only comes when one character watches another being emotionally trampled, which can be fun to watch when it’s handled with wit (it often is) or cruel when it isn’t (which sometimes is the case).

As charming as the film’s title sounds, here is a movie, distinctly French in its clipped rhythms and melodramatic arc, that’s anything but charming. It is, in fact, a jumbled, caustic tour-de-force that’s so aware of the entire oeuvre of French films, you sometimes wonder whether Desplechin is making a satire on French movies themselves. Since it’s difficult to tell, that’s up for debate.

From Desplechin and Emmanual Bourdieu’s screenplay, “A Christmas Tale” is about one dysfunctional family gathering for Christmas when really, they never, ever should have gathered in the first place.

With the exception of the film’s gentle patriarch, Abel (a wonderful Jean-Paul Roussillon), and his kind son Ivan (Melvil Poupaud), most of this smoky bunch hate each other. One family member, Henri (Mathieu Amalric), has been banished from the family for six years by his sister, Elizabeth (Anne Consigny), a playwright who loathes him with a passion otherwise lacking in her dead life, the likes of which are complicated by her emotionally unstable son (Emile Berling), who sees wolves in mirrors.

The family’s matriarch, Junon (Catherine Deneuve in a terrific performance), has a hardened core that belies her beauty. She’s as mean as they come, content to tell her son Henri to his face that she never loved him. Bemused, Henri returns the favor by stating the same. That they do this while sharing a cigarette on a bench gets to the heart of the film’s twisted tone. Meanwhile, a third son, Simon (Laurent Capelluto), is in love with Ivan’s wife, Sylvia (Chiara Mastroianni, Deneuve’s real-life daughter). Trouble is, she’s also in love with him--and where do you think that leads?

All of this occurs over the film’s inflated, 2.5-hour running time while death hovers along the periphery. Junon is battling cancer, which will be deadly if one of her children isn’t an exact match for her bone marrow type. And if one of them is, what does this mean for the family? Will it bring them together?

After all the ugliness that has come before it, the question isn’t whether that’s even possible, but whether audiences will care.

Grade: C+