Big, comfortable house in the provincial French town, white Christmas, family get-together. But, Vuillards are not an ordinary family. The iron willed mother is fighting cancer, but this is not a sentimental story. Bottled up emotions, seething resentments, unresolved issues. And it all explodes in three turbulent days. Cold mother, dotting father that keeps everything together, and four kids, ever present long gone Joseph(died of cancer as a child), Elizabeth( successful playwright, but deeply unhappy), Paul (the proverbial black sheep ,drinks too much to want to control himself), and the youngest Ivan, (handsome, but timid with the history of mental troubles). And there they go, with rituals, carols, Christmas movies, and rivers of booze, never really connecting. And in all of this lunacy there is an undertone of devotion and twisted loyalty. The ever so familiar story of families. The crippling inability to escape where it all started, the place that made us, the people who know us and can't be deceived. So, we come back drawn by the magnet of family bliss, only to be quickly reminded why we left in a first place. Smart, beautiful movie for patient movie lovers.
Review of A Christmas Tale
