A Christmas Tale* Arnaud Desplechin, 2008
I first saw this film all the way back in Nov. 2008 when it came out in the States. I went by myself and sat in the back of the theater as I usually do if I'm by myself and I came out of the screening kinda feeling a little depressed, but I was also teeming with this weird sense of elation because I just had seen this incredible movie and I kept trying to form it all in my head and try to find out why it had such a reaction on me, but it always eluded me. I didn't know why I had responded to it in the way that I had. So I watched it last night (around 1AM, to be more accurate) as I'd always meant to (same with
Kings and Queen and
Ma Vie Sexuelle, even though I saw that last year, too) just to find out what it is that gets me all bothered about it, why it sends me reeling in so many different directions. To start, Desplechin is definitely novelistic. In the sense that there's a lot of backstory and his characters are intricately drawn and have lots of contradictory traits about them and things like that. But he's also very cinematic, which are two things I don't feel have to be exclusive or anything. I'm thinking of the cluttered widescreen compositions in the house (which is like another character, same as
Summer Hours but even more so) filled with pictures, paintings, mementos, people. Yes, people. Personally, I liked all the characters, found them engaging and humorous even when they're cruel to each other or insult each other, and I liked the way that the film evokes myths in order to explain some of the ways that families deal with its history (when Amalric says in his direct address bit that he feels he's part of a myth, but doesn't know what myth it is), and that's not even without mentioning the very direct references to storytelling that are pretty much given away in the title (it's a tale, after all). It starts off with that shadow puppetry or whatever it is detailing the mountainous backstory of the family and then it invokes Shakespeare and Plato at the end, just saying it was all shadows on the wall. Watching the movie, I felt thrilled whenever Desplechin would cut or dissolve within a scene, showing us a new angle, or doing something unexpected because I felt it tied back with his cute little obsession with DJ scratches. And I don't know. I just felt glad to be in this world for 2 and a half hours. I'm an only child, but my mom comes from a large family and that's something I don't have in my life anymore so maybe that's why Desplechin (and Anderson, to a certain extent) hit me so hard. I'm not sure. I'm not sure of anything anymore, but when Emmanuelle Devos conjures up all her energy to momentarily overwhelm the film in the scene above, at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory…
a middle of the road movie? wtf