'Un conte de Noël' ('A Christmas Tale') Movie Review

November 17th
Author: Tessa

Last week provided a lack of indie movies in theaters, so my only real option was to see Un conte de Noël, or as us yanks like to call it, A Christmas Tale. While looking up the movie’s description on IMDB, I wasn’t entirely thrilled about seeing it, being it’s yet another dysfunctional family movie. To add to my discomfort, I also noticed it was 2 ½ hours long and I knew then that I’d be in for a trip…

SYNOPSIS

After a family learns its matriarch, Junon (Catherine Deneuve), is dying from a degenerative cancer, they are forced to have one last Christmas together at the request of the dying woman. The film centers on the family’s children: Elizabeth, the oldest child (Anne Consigny), whose son, Paull (Emile Berling), has a mental breakdown; Henri, the middle sibling (Mathieu Amalric) who has a pretty obvious drinking problem; and Ivan, the youngest (Melvil Poupaud) who seems to be the only one who has it together. Family secrets are revealed among deciding whether or not to risk a dangerous procedure that may save Junon’s life and it makes for one hell of a Christmas.


TESSA’S TWO CENTS

Honestly, I wasn’t a huge fan of this film despite its 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It lacked basic structure and left a lot of important details open-ended, I guess to let the viewer decide for him/herself. It sort of felt as if the film’s writer/director, Arnaud Desplechin, was trying to make the French’s answer to The Royal Tenenbaums or The Family Stone…only it had no humor, no resolution and one confusing plot.

I think part of the problem was there were just too many characters and too much background belonging to each one, which made the current story confusing and jumbled with events of their pasts. Had Desplechin given less background, I think it would have moved along quicker. Instead he chose to spend half of the movie filling in the back-story about the characters and their respective baggage.


Despite having a pretty flawed storyline, the performances themselves were solid. In fact, I will say that’s probably the only good, tolerable thing about this movie. The best performance was by far from Mathieu Amalric (you may know him as the villain in Quantum of Solace), who switched his drunk on at any given second. As the character of Elizabeth described him, he was “evil itself” and really acted that way. He had venomous things to say about his family, elevating the family’s internal tension to an even higher degree.

The character who most bothered me, however, was Elizabeth, played by Anne Consigny from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (which also co-stars Amalric). She was a whiny, sappy mess throughout the entire movie and honestly, it was irritating. Again, I don’t really blame it on Consigny as she was acting as the script/director wanted. Desplechin could have created a depressed character without making them a babbling, crying machine.

IN THE END…

Rating:

Personally, I don’t think it’s worth your $9-15 bucks. If you want to see it that badly, do yourself the favor and wait for the DVD. Hopefully they’ll scale it down an hour and make it a tad more enjoyable…but I won’t be holding my breath.