Lovely new French film: A Christmas Tale

Written by Mark Schumann, Father of Three
Thursday, 11 December 2008 15:47

Every film — like every meal — offers some degree of “nutritional value” to the people who partake. Like some meals, some movies dare to deliver more than a conventional helping. Each week, “the reel dad” offers the “nutritional value” of a film that parents may consider sharing with their kids. This week, he takes a look at the new family drama, A Christmas Tale.

The holidays can bring out the best and worst in families. For many, they can be a time when parents and children come together to share special moments. For others, the pressure of festivities can bring familiar scars to the surface. And, in between, are holiday gatherings where family members simply try to get by and survive to another season.

A lovely new French film, A Christmas Tale, uses the traditions of the holiday to examine an everyday family that, for years, had brushed some of its less appealing feelings under the carpet. With a strong starring performance by the luminous Catherine Deneuve as a matriarch who has been diagnosed with liver cancer, and a strong supporting turn by Matthieu Amalric as the family challenge, A Christmas Tale offers a candid view of how people who care about each other sometimes take funny approaches to expressing their feelings. No matter the makeup of your family, this is the kind of film where it’s always easy to spot a bit of yourselves.

The family at the center of A Christmas Tale is a bit like people you may know. The parents have distinct, and at times complex, relationships with their children who, by this time, have children of their own, giving the parents a second chance to dote on young people. The sandwich generation of young parents is, at times, a bit too self-centered, a touch too professionally driven, more than a tad too focused on the weaknesses of others.

When the matriarch’s illness — and need for a compatible bone marrow donor for a transplant — brings everyone together for the holidays, the emotional baggage passes around the family dining table as freely as wine and candied yams. Fundamentally, the people in this family care about each other. Emotionally, they would do anything to support each other. Practically, however, they are much too eager to jump into battle, freely bringing up a vast collection of overdue frustrations and disappointments.

What makes the film work so well is how its director, Arnaud Desplechin, never lets any of the characters take themselves too seriously. Even at the most intense emotional moments, the director lets the characters’ humanity show through, as in real life, without letting the sense of cinema take over. By keeping most of the scenes short, and letting the conclusion simply occur without offering a meaningful moral to the story, Desplechin reveals a strong gift for character and pace.

And by letting each of the characters have his or her own expressive moments on screen, the director never dwells on any one person’s plight. The film never spends so much time, for example, focusing on the illness of the matriarch that it neglects the emotional issues of the other family members. By creating a real sense of family on screen, Desplechin reminds us that, at the end of any holiday, the issues may never be resolved, but the sharing can be just as real.

As parents, we hope, when our children are grown, they will want to come home to share the holidays with us. We hope, with each visit, that family bonds will strengthen. None of us can foresee how future issues may pressure the families we treasure. Films like A Christmas Tale can remind us that, no matter the issues, we have only one family and we should all use every opportunity.

Note to Parents: Not every member of your family may find A Christmas Tale appealing. It is, essentially, a series of conversations within a family over the holidays. That means there isn’t a lot of action and, because the film is in French, quite a few subtitles to track. But for those willing to become patiently absorbed in the dynamics, the film will be a rewarding visit to a family’s holiday gathering. This is suitable for older children and parents.

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