Ein Weihnachtsmärchen

It just doesn't get much better than this for fans of movie-making…or fans of music, art, literature, philosophy…even algebra? Arnaud Desplechin uses Robert Altman's impressionistic approach to film-making taking multiple characters, plots lines then adding Altman's playfulness with cinematic technique to dazzle the viewer with a rich mix of ideas and allusions. Watching, you just don't want it to end.

The actors here—as in Altman—take center stage. Catherine Deneuve is the reluctant matriarch of some pretty messed-up siblings. We aren't ever clued in on the exact details of the rifts and jealousies. We just recognize them from our own family experiences. During an introduction to the cast of characters at the beginning of the film, the death of a young infant early in the family's history suggests that interpersonal problems will result, but it can't be the sole reason for the pathologies represented. As in life, it's never a simple thing to find the "reason" for conflict, unhappiness or even joy. We simply have to accept it and make the best of the situations before us. And this film is a wonderful demonstration of making the best of a real mess.

There's not a weak link in the cast. And as the bizarre begin to assemble for a very strange Christmas homecoming the delight we feel for being onlookers instead of participants is palpable in the audience.

I should warn that this is not a film in the tradition of "Home Alone" or "A Christmas Story." You may wait a long time for the Baby Jesus to arrive here (as the children on the screen do). It's more a film about family life and the peculiar kind of fulfillment we get from the strife that results. As with the "ghost wolf" in this family's basement, we're haunted by the familiar and the strange: it's both fearful and thrilling to see. And that's a very admirable accomplishment for Arnaud Desplechin.

A plethora of awesome actors in perfect symbiosis, refined dialogues, a sense of humor very dark and even cynical, jubilant duels between brothers and sisters, a surrealistic conversation (a kind of 'I love you, neither do I') between a mother and her son, probabilistic calculations on life expectancy, ... It is a real delight but definitely not a Christmas tale. I loved this atypical, dysfunctional and weird family!

I got to hand it to the filmmaker, Arnaud Desplechin, at least on one significant point: A Christmas Tale is like a big book faithfully adapted to the screen, only in this case non-existent, and it has that wonderful if imperfect feeling of surrounding oneself with the world and atmosphere and attitudes of a family where the dysfunction runs deep and clear, emphasizing Tolstoy's classic "no one unhappy family is the same" credo. His film is also sometimes a big melodrama, folded around a cancer story not unlike a more serious (yet sometimes lighter version of) The Royal Tenenbaums, and centered so firmly around the family during that crazy but loving-despite-everything time of Christmas you'd swear Desplechin watched the first hour of Fanny & Alexander too many times to count.

At the same time A Christmas Tale in very much a French film, is attitude and approach to narrative and occasionally nearing that dreaded P-word (pretentious) in being 2 1/2 hours of incidents and confrontations and little details and twists. A lot happens with the Vuillard family over a few days, but in it uncovers a whole can of worms involving a banished son (Mathieu Amalric, who thankfully is maybe the centerpiece of the ensemble in terms of being the black sheep like Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married), a depressed daughter (Anne Consigny who, despite being effective in a one-note performance, is also so shrill and cold as a character it's hard to feel anything for her, at all, despite her plight of losing her older brother as a child), and a cousin who has loved his cousin's wife ever since he got him, Ivan, the youngest Vuillard brother, to hook up with her so many years ago. Meanwhile, the mother (Catherine Deneuve, who may not exactly be a great actress but is the greatest living female French star which carries a lot of weight as a true beauty), has cancer, possibly terminal, unless a donor comes forward.

So there's a lot here to work with - maybe, perhaps, arguably too much, though it's almost a credit to the director that I can't say exactly what (little things, for example, like the Christmas Eve sex scene are deliberately paced but for good reason), and he laces everything with a curious jazz score throughout, sometimes to great effect and sometimes not. But, at the least, it's wonderful to see so many good actors in one place, particularly Amalric who is quickly becoming a truly fantastic talent with a lot of range in the work I've seen him in- one day he's a subdued intelligence man in Munich, next he's paralyzed except for one eye-blinking in Diving Bell, and even a 007 villain- and here goes further in a scene stealing performance (one such scene is his toast at the Christmas dinner, a scene actually shocking and hilarious and sad all in a thirty-second split).

He and Deneuve and the underrated Jean-Paul Roussillon as the husband of Junon almost make me want to rate the movie higher. But alas, it is what it is: a very strong take on a familiar subject - crazy and light and dark and tragic and unnerving times with a family at Christmas - and standing it on its head, while also the things I mention above. Did I mention it's French? 7.5/10

After his impressing "Kings and queen" in 2004, Arnaud Desplechin proves that he's the best director come out from France in the last two decades with this exhilarating, moving, awfully brilliant "A Christmas tale". Following the path of its previous feature, the movie mixtures very hard scenes of desperation and hatred feelings with moments of absurd joy in an structure full of elliptical jumps from the past to the present and back again to the memories of another time. There's nothing new in his cinema and this is perhaps the only problem, that everything is well known yet; this is the first time that happens and today i think i have enjoyed very much the film but maybe it's time to spin around again and cut across another new ground. Desplechin knows the way.

This one, however, is not for everyone. Most people will probably not only have trouble with its length, but its style, as well. Both as wild as it is imaginative, this film is like a post-modern jazz score, mixing elements from a variety of cinematic styles that are jarring (at times), but always interesting to behold. And as long as the film is, it always keeps moving and changing before our very eyes. What makes its odd stylistic combinations work is the compelling depths of its explorations into family and the bonds the unite, or divide us. Like and The Royal Tennenbaums, with a nouvelle vague twist, the film is not only full of odd combinations of image and music, but seems to jump from one film to another from scene to scene, as if each character or emotional quality (from light comedy to serious drama) were each receiving its own rendering. At times, the characters turn and speak directly to the camera. The filmmaker also intercedes by providing chapter headings and keyhole views, but, somehow, what could have become a cacophony of chaos, turns into a wonderment of cinema that any real cinephile will be amazed to behold and want to experience again....