A family reunites for Christmas and, over the holiday, confronts a series of long repressed tensions and conflicts, for better or worse. This plot has been used dozens of times in the past, perhaps because the underlying stresses and demands of any holiday or family get-together are well suited for the incitement of theatrical emotional turmoil. Whatever the case may be, this dance plays itself out once again in Arnaud Desplechin’s acclaimed 2008 film, A Christmas Tale (and if you can believe it, it feels less like a Christmas movie than the other “Christmas Tale” I’ve covered).
After rescuing her family from financial ruin, eldest child Elizabeth Deneuve demands that her relatives actively facilitate her complete renunciation of her irresponsible brother, Henri. Cut to five years later, when the two siblings are finally reunited for Christmas over the pending bone marrow transplant of their mother (for which Henri and Elizabeth’s troubled son Paul are the only eligible donors).The Christmas Spirit is just about the last thing that’s in the air as more and more secrets and conflicts come to light over the course of this long, snowy holiday.
A Christmas Tale is a highly personal film for Desplechin, if the accompanying documentary L’aimee is any indication. Despite all the heavy confrontations swirling about the Deneuve household, there’s a subtle feeling of fond remembrance throughout the film, as if the director was actually feeling nostalgic for the emotional crises on screen. The reason for this, it seems, and the reason the film on the whole works so well, is that no matter how acidic Elizabeth’s feelings for her brother, or how drunk Henri gets, or how resigned to her fate the Deneuve matriarch becomes, the film’s cast never stop feeling like a family.
Elizabeth and Henri, portrayed by Anne Consigny and Mathieu Amalric, are the crux of everything that happens in A Christmas Story, and give the film’s standout performances. It takes a great deal of talent to make a character as brazen and drunkenly antagonistic as Henri so likable, just as it does to make the distant and exhaustingly emotionally tortured Elizabeth feel so human. The rest of the cast is great as well, from the elderly yet spirited father played by Jean-Paul Roussillon to Emile Berling’s touching portrayal of the schizophrenic Paul, but whatever other plotlines develop, this is always clearly Henri and Elizabeth’s story. This limit in scope isn’t damaging to the film’s quality, but it does leave some wells of character development untapped.
The Criterion special features are likewise limited chiefly to two supplementals, the aforementioned documentary and a series of interviews with A Christmas Tale’s director and actors. These features do get more at the heart of the film’s origins and personal meaning, but that’s about it. Still, if you ever feel like spending a holiday with a thoroughly unique family, give A Christmas Tale a look (just don’t watch it on Christmas).
A Christmas Tale is rated PG-13 for strong subtitled language, strong sexual content and some violence. The DVD and Blu-ray are available from Amazon for $23.
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