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A Very French Christmas
Arnaud Desplechin’s new film is a dark exploration of addiction, resentment and redemption
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A Christmas Tale, the latest from dynamic French director Arnaud Desplechin, is no Hollywood holiday blockbuster. Nominated for a Golden Palm, the story brings together a cornucopia of family complications, including a child lost to a rare genetic disease, a sibling with a penchant for drink and women, a controlling sister with a mentally troubled son of her own, plus a little disownment thrown in the mix. This ensemble drama is not a neatly wrapped present.
Junon (Catherine Deneuve) and her husband Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon) discover their oldest child, Joseph, has a rare cancer. Neither the parents nor his sister, Elizabeth, can provide the compatible bone marrow to save him, so the parents have another son with the hope of saving their oldest. Sadly, the third child, Henri, is incompatible, and Joseph dies at the age of seven. The bereaved parents have yet another son, Ivan, but the loss of the first child stays with the family. Years later, and just in time for the holidays, a grown-up Elizabeth has bailed out the middle sibling, Henri, from financial troubles, on the condition that she never has to see him again. But when the matriarch is diagnosed with the same cancer that killed her first son, the family feels compelled to come together.
Desplechin has an amazing cast to tease out these emotional familial complexities. Never forgetting that fallibility can be funny, Desplechin makes it hilarious, throwing in surprising laughs to combat the darker moments.
Desplechin’s last feature, Kings and Queen (2004), proved the director’s unique talent for presenting characters that are unapologetically human right down to their insanities. An anorexic suicidal dreamer and a narcissistic musician meet in the loony bin and learn to step outside of themselves and appreciate life. A doting father is revealed to be secretly resentful of his daughter. A loving mother screws up. A lot. And every fantastical turn is believable because, collectively, the characters’ fallibilities are so essentially human.
With A Christmas Tale, Desplechin uses his talent for humanistic stories to examine the time of year most fraught with intense feelings. This new feature promises to make us all seem a little less crazy for getting through family functions—and life in general—the best we can. Ultimately, A Christmas Tale’s message is quite traditional: Regardless of how messy the details, family is a comfort we all need.