Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

lukechong ...Not that it needed to, but if your movie is 2 hours 32 minutes long, then, well, I suppose something really interesting ought to develop. "A Christmas Tale" has an intriguing if well trodden premise - a family coming together for Christmas, to find the cancer-stricken mum a suitable bone marrow donor - but in spite of scenes which promise much, the whole movie doesn't really take off. People will argue that life is precisely that, very nonresolving and a series of tableaux, but the short cuts and staccato editing make this tale harder to enjoy than most. Not to mention so many issues which are left hanging in midair, other than the director nudging us "C'est la vie". You'd be hard pressed to understand why little gets developed to reach something of a climax.So the sister, at the end of the film, probably goes on hating his second brother without really understanding herself; the youngest brother allows his wife to sleep with his cousin, who had been carrying a torch for her over the years. That said, the acting all round is excellent, a well rehearsed cast including the ageless Catherine Deneuve, characters who are fleshed out decently, but who'd really remember a series of interminable scenes which doesn't exactly coalesce into an artistic whole? As an intimate family drama it's certainly too long at 152 minutes.

LyceeM16 ALERT- there are spoilers here: This film is maddening in that the characters on many levels are completely unsympathetic...and yet they manage to draw you in and elicit empathy.The acting is superb. I loved the music and the jerky cinematic quality- making it look like a home movie at times. In this respect, the cinematography reminds me a bit of Cousin Cousine and the shots of the family in that film at the party.The story was multi-layered. Many times I expected some violent incident but I was immensely relieved that the film never resorted to this type of a device.Questions are posed, mysteries are revealed and the questions remain unanswered at the end of the movie. Nothing is neat. All is messy and unresolved in away that is true to life. The relationship between Junon and her husband is unusually tender and believable. I loved the hematologic subtext. Even more- I loved the ending with its reference to The Tempest.

aFrenchparadox The problem with Desplechin's films is also what makes me love them, i.e. their mental-ness. I mean it's so mental that you sometimes doubt such messed-up families can exist. Cold mother who has never really loved any of her children, except maybe the dead one (and would she have loved him if he had lived?). Absolutely neurotic daughter who made her family banish her brother but never seems to wonder if maybe she messed up her own son's education. Obnoxious banned brother who enjoys to be able to save her mother to regain power over his sister and his mother. Obnoxious but so relevant sometimes. The youngest one and the cousin are less mental, it's true. Except for the fact that, younger, they decided between them and the obnoxious brother who should have the girl who would become the youngest one's wife. And the father who just does nothing but watching his family fighting without reacting. I am really not sure we could find a family so dysfunctioning. There is obviously real worse families but they just fall apart and don't stick together. This one is actually functioning by dysfunctioning. Anyway, all this obnoxiousness is jubilation material if you enjoy irreverence and boldness. And is played by a wonderful Catherine Deneuve and a never disappointing (except in James Bond) Mathieu Amalric. Emmanuelle Devos makes a short apparition which is of her usual talent, too. Some usual Desplechin hence, quite addressed to a particular type of people, quite snob, maybe elitist, but so amusing.

lastliberal The film deals with death, but not in a morbid way. One of the queerest scenes involved Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon), Junon Vuillard's (Catherine Deneuve) husband, and Claude (Hippolyte Girardot), working the statistical chances of survival and the time left if Junon chose to have or not have a bone marrow transplant for her cancer. This is not something I could ever imagine happening anywhere else.Junon was so cool about the whole thing that you never really thought about the fact that she was dying.The entire family, sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, girlfriends, and others arrive at the family house to celebrate Christmas, each with their own funny and not-so-funny issues.The main issue working throughout the entire film is between brother and sister, Henri (Mathieu Amalric) and Elizabeth (Anne Consigny). Both actors were brilliant, and I am still not totally sure of the issues.There were other issues going on, and they are way too numerous to mention. The film deals with family and repentance, and forgiveness, among other issues.Arnaud Desplechin works like no other director I have seen and, while it may be distracting at times, it is never boring. The two and a half hours fly by.The children's Christmas play was hilarious, and dealt with the same themes.This was definitely one of the best films of 2008.