recommended

Fantastic!

Boring

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

I've sat through a couple of Desplechin-Bourdieu films (Esther Kahn, Comment je me suis dispute) that I've hated. Long, talky and pointless, I thought. But Un Conte is different; it carefully brings a family to life in all its complexity. The father is patient with those around him when he could easily be bitter and harsh: it is a superb performance by Jean Paul Roussillon. Catherine Deneuve as the mother glides through her part but we can't be critical because she gives the movie so much star power (just as Cary Grant did for four Hitchcock pictures).The children are very well acted. Henri will be a screw-up for the rest of his life but will win people's affection, certainly he did mine. Ivan's easy fatherhood skills and laissez-faire approach to his wife's infidelity are memorable. Elizabeth's attitude towards Henri is the most problematic thing in the film. We have to take it on faith that his behaviour has been so awful that she is justified in taking the action she does. Anne Consigny gives a moving performance as the sister with a grievance.

A Christmas Tale has been booked as an extremely unconventional holiday film from most major reviewers. This is a selling point-the film is a "true" examination of the holidays that offers no traditional entry and exit. It's the direct contrast of Four Christmases and at least one reviewer pondered "If only American Christmas films could be like this one..." Certainly, A Christmas Tale is unconventional, using Wes Anderson-like bookmark introductions as an omniscient narrator dictates the various children's upbringing. Scenes suddenly cut off in the middle or change. Things are never really explained. Two characters have a major feud between them but the origins are never quite described.This lack of knowledge and unpredictability gives A Christmas Tale an almost luminous ambiance. The film doesn't really move forward so much as float. Characters self-consciously talk about their own trappings in a theatrical way or muse about an event the audience was never privy too. It feels like the viewer is spying on this family, not in a Hitchcockian sense, but more as a privileged member. And although all of these distinctive attributes distinguish the film from more generic fare, it doesn't honestly add much. There is little emotional investment in the characters or their struggles, even though so much of the film depends on a sympathetic audience. The happy moments or the sad ones seem to do little to really effect anyone because such little is known about these people. The film feels airy and faint but it only lessens the impact.One wonders why this approach was chosen. Perhaps to get the audience to feel instead of think. It doesn't seem like A Christmas Tale really wants to offer something different, as primed by others. Instead the filmmakers simply want to tell a story that transports the audience to France. They want the viewer to invest in these characters struggles and feel for them. But the film is loaded with such sudden and copious amounts of joy and the usual suspects- a scruffy but loving husband, a stern but fair mother, the black sheep who doesn't understand, the loving husband who doesn't complain, the adolescent child who is trying to find his place... the list goes on. But what's the significance? Where's the punch? What's the so what?It's difficult to recommend this film even though the rating may not seem terrible. "Worth watching" is difficult to categorize in this place because the film feels like a continuation of this director's style but I know very little about his prior works. Check it out but don't expect much and you may be pleasantly surprised.

I can't remember the last time a movie was so boring that I walked out. The Weatherman and The Island were both so bad that I thought about it but I even stayed to the end in those. This movie was incomprehensible, not funny and just went on and on and on. Like some other commentators, I wondered if parts were just French humor that I didn't get or if the characters were serious. I finally just gave up and tried napping because I didn't want to disturb my husband if he was enjoying it but he noticed and let me know that it was OKAY if I wanted to leave and out the door we went. He would like to know how it ended...if Denevue lived or died etc...(I don't even care).

This one, however, is not for everyone. Most people will probably not only have trouble with its length, but its style, as well. Both as wild as it is imaginative, this film is like a post-modern jazz score, mixing elements from a variety of cinematic styles that are jarring (at times), but always interesting to behold. And as long as the film is, it always keeps moving and changing before our very eyes. What makes its odd stylistic combinations work is the compelling depths of its explorations into family and the bonds the unite, or divide us. Like and The Royal Tennenbaums, with a nouvelle vague twist, the film is not only full of odd combinations of image and music, but seems to jump from one film to another from scene to scene, as if each character or emotional quality (from light comedy to serious drama) were each receiving its own rendering. At times, the characters turn and speak directly to the camera. The filmmaker also intercedes by providing chapter headings and keyhole views, but, somehow, what could have become a cacophony of chaos, turns into a wonderment of cinema that any real cinephile will be amazed to behold and want to experience again....