This story is not about celebrating the holiday as we know it, but about the randomness of love and the cruelty of death
By Bob Brown
THIS is not your typical Christmas movie. Sure, it has a dysfunctional family who get together for the holiday, with the expected clashing personalities and smashing crockery. But there are no lethal lighting displays, no drunken department store Santas, no naughty elves, errant reindeer or puking infants. In short, there’s not a single cheap laugh in the film’s rather generous two and half hours.
Instead, what we have here is Noel in the French style: an all-talking film about serious life problems, which are dissected at some length and viewed from all angles by three generations of a single family, the Vuillards. This is the work of director Arnaud Desplechin, who co-wrote the script with Emmanuel Bourdieu. In a plot worthy of Edward Gorey, the Vuillards are burdened with malevolent genes. By his 7th birthday, a rare cancer has killed Joseph, the first-born son of Abel and Junon Vuillard (Jean-Paul Roussillon and Catherine Deneuve, respectively).
Decades later, their daughter Elizabeth (Anne Consigny) suffers from an unshakeable sadness whose origin she cannot pin down. She knows only that she detests her dissolute younger brother Henri (Mathieu Amalric), and she pays off his debts on the condition that she never see him again. But the rare malady that had visited the unfortunate Joseph has re-emerged. Junon learns that she, too, has an incurable cancer. A bone marrow transplant will buy her a few extra months. But only Henri, an irresponsible, womanizing alcoholic, and Paull (Emile Berling), a mentally unstable young nephew, have compatible blood.
At the family home in the industrial city of Roubaix, where Abel owns a dye-works, the Vuillards gather at Yuletide to make decisions. Celebrating Christmas, perhaps Junon’s last, is almost an afterthought. Tensions that have been held in check for years erupt and spread like a disease. Henri’s boorishness, fueled by his drinking, and Paull’s fragile state are only part of the problem. Son Ivan (Melvil Poupaud) is married to Sylvia (Chiara Mastroianni), who in turn discovers that cousin Simon (Laurent Capelluto) still loves her just as much as she loves him.
Add to this the fact that everyone is brutally frank — Junon and Henri acknowledge they have never loved each other, and Henri’s uninvited girlfriend Faunia (Emmanuelle Devos) tells Junon she never chums up to her boyfriends’ families, nor will she give or receive holiday gifts. It makes for a very awkward Christmas around the dinner table.
Understand, these are all very accomplished, cultured people, not the middle-class boobs who populate American holiday comedies. Abel is fond of listening to his Charles Mingus records while studying the score. And when daughter Elizabeth needs some words of wisdom about life’s mysteries, Papa tugs a copy of Nietzsche off his book-lined shelves, reading to her as if it were the most natural thing in the world. After all, as she is a renowned playwright, Elizabeth deserves more than mere bromides. These are all sophisticated people whose anguish is as painful as their perception is acute.
There’s a lot of meat on this Christmas goose, along with a fair serving of fat. The thicket of characters and interactions is sometimes difficult to follow. Abel is the most avuncular and sympathetic character, while Junon seems uncharacteristically cool to her children, especially Henri. Performances by Consigny and Amalric are outstanding, but some of the characters’ motivations are puzzling (e.g., the menage-a-trois between Ivan, Claude and Simon). The musical score by Grégoire Hetzel and musical selections from many periods are thoughtfully crafted to support the story line. It’s not incidental that Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream is prominent.
As Junon’s date with the hospital approaches, ghosts past and ghosts to be hover over the proceedings: those of Joseph; of Henri’s wife, who died in a crash; and of Junon’s future self. A Christmas Tale is not about celebrating the holiday as we know it; this story is about the fragile randomness of love and the cruelty of indiscriminate death. Desplechin’s characters are desperate for meaning and connection in a world that offers little reassurance, other than the rituals we create to light the darkness.
This film is not rated. In French with English subtitles.

