Bob Taylor 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.

Thomas_S Two and a half hours of overlong, dragged-out, tedious misery and gloom from start to finish in a dysfunctional neurotic family where nearly everybody hates nearly everybody else and too many try to drown their sorrow in alcohol and tobacco.It is because of pseudo-intellectual artsy-fartsy films like this many say that life is too short for French films. There are many good French films; this is just not one of them.To add to the misery, the film has been shot in one of the most grey, boring, depressing and uninteresting parts of France, so there is no beautiful scenery to lift it up, and nothing else saves it from total gloom.Not one character is likable, and after thirty minutes, one no longer cares whatever happens to them.This is not a Christmas movie in the traditional sense. The gloom just happens to be set over the holiday period for the purpose of having the entire family together so their mutual rejection can be spelt out.If you don't like this after the first fifteen minutes, you can just as well stop it. It doesn't get any better.On the other hand, if you appreciate sad films where nothing really happens, except for each family member's psychological trauma interacting with the others', then you may well use this review to conclude that here is something for your taste.

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.

MisterWhiplash I got to hand it to the filmmaker, Arnaud Desplechin, at least on one significant point: A Christmas Tale is like a big book faithfully adapted to the screen, only in this case non-existent, and it has that wonderful if imperfect feeling of surrounding oneself with the world and atmosphere and attitudes of a family where the dysfunction runs deep and clear, emphasizing Tolstoy's classic "no one unhappy family is the same" credo. His film is also sometimes a big melodrama, folded around a cancer story not unlike a more serious (yet sometimes lighter version of) The Royal Tenenbaums, and centered so firmly around the family during that crazy but loving-despite-everything time of Christmas you'd swear Desplechin watched the first hour of Fanny & Alexander too many times to count.At the same time A Christmas Tale in very much a French film, is attitude and approach to narrative and occasionally nearing that dreaded P-word (pretentious) in being 2 1/2 hours of incidents and confrontations and little details and twists. A lot happens with the Vuillard family over a few days, but in it uncovers a whole can of worms involving a banished son (Mathieu Amalric, who thankfully is maybe the centerpiece of the ensemble in terms of being the black sheep like Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married), a depressed daughter (Anne Consigny who, despite being effective in a one-note performance, is also so shrill and cold as a character it's hard to feel anything for her, at all, despite her plight of losing her older brother as a child), and a cousin who has loved his cousin's wife ever since he got him, Ivan, the youngest Vuillard brother, to hook up with her so many years ago. Meanwhile, the mother (Catherine Deneuve, who may not exactly be a great actress but is the greatest living female French star which carries a lot of weight as a true beauty), has cancer, possibly terminal, unless a donor comes forward.So there's a lot here to work with - maybe, perhaps, arguably too much, though it's almost a credit to the director that I can't say exactly what (little things, for example, like the Christmas Eve sex scene are deliberately paced but for good reason), and he laces everything with a curious jazz score throughout, sometimes to great effect and sometimes not. But, at the least, it's wonderful to see so many good actors in one place, particularly Amalric who is quickly becoming a truly fantastic talent with a lot of range in the work I've seen him in- one day he's a subdued intelligence man in Munich, next he's paralyzed except for one eye-blinking in Diving Bell, and even a 007 villain- and here goes further in a scene stealing performance (one such scene is his toast at the Christmas dinner, a scene actually shocking and hilarious and sad all in a thirty-second split).He and Deneuve and the underrated Jean-Paul Roussillon as the husband of Junon almost make me want to rate the movie higher. But alas, it is what it is: a very strong take on a familiar subject - crazy and light and dark and tragic and unnerving times with a family at Christmas - and standing it on its head, while also the things I mention above. Did I mention it's French? 7.5/10