A CHRISTMAS TALE (UN CONTE DE NOEL)
This seems to happen about once a year - a film is released that receives heavy critical acclaim, I go see it, and I walk out scratching my head as to what exactly it was that so impressed the masses. Usually it’s a foreign film, and I chalk it up to pseudointellectuals with a hard-on for anything either with subtitles, a running time of over 140 minutes, a generous amount of artistic pretension, or a sprawling cast of colorful characters.
Arnaud Desplechin’s latest French opus Un Conte de Noel (US: A Christmas Tale) is all of the above, and painfully so. Seemingly unaware of the wealth of dysfunctional-family-reunion Holiday films that came before (The Ref, Home for the Holidays…), this film seems to go for some sort of record by presenting a family so steeped in neurosis that the Hoovers of Little Miss Sunshine seem the very pillar of emotional stability in comparison.
At the core of the Vuillard family is Junon (Catherine Deneuve in an effectively subdued performance), mother of four (Henri the explosive alcoholic, Elizabeth the depressed mother of a schizophrenic boy, Ivan the reasonably adjusted yet ultimately cuckold husband, and one dead baby, natch), and recent recipient of a diagnosis of a rare and fatal cancer (again, natch). Whereas of course there is much more to the 150-minute tale, the basic plot involves all parties getting screened to find a compatible donor for Junon, then getting together for Christmas dinner despite the fact that, per Elizabeth’s demand, Henri has been estranged for over five years, guilty of some grave sin for which Elizabeth harbors some tremendous loathing.
Seems simple and interesting enough, right? Yes we’ve seen similar films before, but certainly there’s room for one more small, quiet, sparse film about family dynamics, right? So what’s with the completely insane cinematography and editing? Do you really need nine cuts in an otherwise 30-second sequence where a woman moves across a kitchen or around her bedroom to perform mundane tasks? And what the hell is with all the funky irises??
For those unfamiliar, an iris is when a filmmaker draws focus to a person or an object by centering them into a circle and blacking out the surroundings, like so:
The use of the iris in A Christmas Tale is so inexplicable and inconsistent, it drew curious looks and ultimately a few confused chuckles from the audience - irises show up early in the film in one otherwise innocuous scene, disappear for over an hour, then reappear unexpectedly. Same with the baffling ominous film noir musical cues during a mall shopping scene, the Nyman-esque sounds of violin pomp as Henri does nothing more than climb down the side of the house, and again, those strange and scattered moments of slapdash editing that swing the movie from Altman to Boll and back again (yes, that Boll) - it really does feel at times as if someone gave a film school student a budget and a tremendous cast and set him loose.
And yet, this film is getting some great reviews. And to be fair it’s not without its merits, though I don’t equate having great elements in play with having a great film. The performances in this film are all top-notch, though any filmmaker would be hard-pressed to get a bad performance from seasoned actors like Mathieu Almaric and Deneuve. There is a lot of intriguing back-story to the Vuillard family, though it’s a testament to Desplechin’s pretension that he makes you sit through near three hours of his vision, yet never answers the question that most lingers throughout - exactly what it was that Henri did to incur Elizabeth’s rage. And yeah, a self-important film connoisseur would argue that “It doesn’t matter,” but I call bullshit on that - you don’t set up a mystery just to make your otherwise standard story more engaging, then never provide a the payoff of a revelation.
Combine this with the inventive approach to shots and edits and one gets the impression that perhaps Desplechin didn’t have enough faith in his story, his characters, and/or his actors to simply allow the story to unfold - that, or faith in his audience to have the temperament to take it in. Perhaps he was aware of just how conventional his Christmas tale was, and he felt the need to infuse it with baffling style and unanswered Big Questions. All in all, I was very disappointed with A Christmas Tale, and more so by the critics whose praise will result in other unsuspecting film goers putting good money down on mediocre cinema. The cast is worthy of applause - the film is not.
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