French 'A Christmas Tale' a true cinematic joy
The Vuillards - at the center of Arnaud Desplechin's superb new film, "A Christmas Tale" - are a bourgeois French family, boisterous and lively on the surface, but seething with dark secrets, resentments and little tragedies underneath. And their Christmas gathering this year, in Desplechin's radiantly smart French-language film, is probably the fieriest they've ever had.
Mama Junon (played by Catherine Deneuve, still a knockout at 65), is suffering from leukemia and needs a bone-marrow transplant - the same leukemia that, decades ago, killed her first son Joseph and started a chain of family guilts and angers that lasts to this day. Papa Abel (the wondrously troll-like Jean-Paul Roussillon) is a dye-maker much older than his dazzling wife, an earthy old soul who seems almost out of place. (Did Michel Piccoli sneak in and beat his time?)
Henri (the often-seen Mathieu Amalric of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly") is a scapegrace theater guy, drunk and womanizer, despised by his elder sister Elizabeth (Anne Consigny). He's been long isolated from her and most of the family but he's here, partly because his blood type matches his mother's - and he's attending with his fiercely proud Jewish girlfriend Faunia (Emmanuelle Devos). Elizabeth's husband, Claude (Hippolyte Girardot) hates Henri, and their emotionally fragile son Paul (Emile Berling) complicates matters: He also matches blood types with Grand'Mere Junon.
Youngest son Ivan (Melvil Popaud) is a free spirit whose wife Sylvia (Chiara Mastroianni, the daughter of Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni) is about to make an eye-opening discovery about her marriage and about Ivan's pal, moody cousin Simon (Laurent Capelluto).
If you know French cinema, you'll recognize many of these names as among the leading lights. This is a great cast, and Desplechin and fellow writer Emmanuel Boride, have given them great roles to play. Desplechin has also set Eric Gautier and his camera to prowl and capture them at will. There's a striking similarity between "Tale" and Jonathan Demme's "Rachel Getting Married," but I actually prefer this film. It has more great actors and more great scenes.
The main narrative beauty of "Christmas Tale" lies in the fact that Desplechin and Bourdieu see the characters with a clear eye, but love them anyway. The film bathes its grand ensemble in the luminous fairy strains of Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" music, perhaps to signal that something magical is about to happen.
Desplechin, who had many of the same actors in his widely admired "Kings and Queen," is a French humanist/realist in the Jean Renoir-Claude Sautet school, and "A Christmas Tale" is a wonderful, intelligent, lovingly crafted ensemble film of the kind Renoir and Robert Altman used to give us. I loved it. The cast glows from top to bottom, and, Deneuve, believe it or not, is as lovely and sexy as ever. To all this splendid company: Merry Christmas! Joyeux Noel!
<p class="factboxheadblack">"A Christmas Tale"</p> <p class="News"><b>Rating</b>: Four stars</p> <p class="News"><b>Starring: </b>Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Anne Consigny, Mathieu Amalric and Melvil Popaud</p> <p class="News"><b>Directed by:</b> Arnaud Desplechin</p> <p class="News">In French, with English subtitles. An IFC release. Not rated. 166 minutes</p>