Who’s In It: Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Mathieu Almaric, Melvil Poupaud, Anne Consigny, Hippolyte Girardot, Emile Berling, Emmanuelle Devos
The Basics: As everyone knows by now, Christmas is about hating your family. But in France they don't pull punches about it. In this one, the matriarch of a huge, constantly resentful clan (Catherine Deneuve) has leukemia. And the rest of the annoying, battling relatives, including the son everyone hates (Mathieu Amalric from Quantum of Solace) is coming over for Christmas. Now before you go, “Oh no, another The Family Stone,” just sit back and relax. There will be no forced heartwarmth here. You’re in the hands of masterful French director Arnaud Desplechin, who doesn’t let anyone off the hook, weaves plots and characters together like a novelist and refuses to go for the easy way out.
What’s The Deal: A sprawling, complex web of family betrayals, emotionally stunted relationships, disappointments, banishments and plain old eccentric behavior are cliché by now (see Family Stone reference above), but in this movie it’s all so frighteningly true that watching these chicly miserable people be this uncool to each other will make you grateful for your own only somewhat dysfunctional family. And because it’s set at Christmas, it makes the melancholy and the tentative moves toward forgiveness that much more bittersweet, emphasis on the bitter.
Who Carries It All: It’s an ensemble, of course, and the sad-dog-faced Amalric makes a great black sheep of the family and Emmanuelle Devos as his girlfriend provides a cool scene-robbing counterpoint to the dour holiday mood. But it’s Deneuve and her legendary ability to make you worship her even when she’s telling her own son how she never loved him that will stick in your brain after you leave.
Now, Let’s Say You’re Already A Fan Of The Recent Crop Of French Christmas Films: Like 1999’s La Bûche or last year’s Dans Paris. There have to be at least a few of you out there. Anyway this one’s not like those movies much at all. La Buche was warmer and broader, while Dans Paris was more like an adorable little homage to Godard. Desplechin goes big and labyrinthine, takes two-and-a-half hours to tell the whole story, goes deeper into sadness than La Buche and less deeply into the whimsically youthful energy of Dans. He’s his own man for sure and he isn’t concerned with pushing you to feel merry and bright. But if you do, it’s because the movie earned it.