A Christmas Tale 8

Quel plaisir to spend 152 minutes with a French family, even one as dysfunctional as this. It took a while to figure out who was who, let alone why, and then part of the fun was deciding whom you liked the most and why. The men were either reprobates or ciphers, except for the short and sweet but largely ineffectual patriarch Junon, who, like me, did the dishes. The personalities belonged to the four women, all of whom, this being a French movie, were easy on the eyes. Of course, if Catherine Deneuve is your mother, that gives you a head start. She was the background, though; it was daughter Elisabeth and daughter-in-law Sylvie who presented the subtle psychological drama. Not so subtle was brother Henri, who was the Rachel to this party. Did we ever care what happened? Not much – even mother’s life-or-death marrow transplant was reduced, from the outset, to a statistical wash. We just were mesmerized, watching from outside.

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