Un conte de Noël (2008)

Un conte de Noël is a French film comedy-drama first released in 2008, directed by Arnaud Desplechin.  The film stars Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Mathieu Amalric, Emile Berling and Laurent Capelluto.  It has also been released under the title: A Christmas Tale.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


Abel and Junon Vuillard have two children – Joseph and Elizabeth.  When their son is diagnosed with a rare life-threatening illness which only a bone-marrow transplant can cure, Abel and Junon have another child in the hope of saving him.  Unfortunately, the new-born, Henri, is, like his sister, incompatible and Joseph dies.  Years later, Elizabeth is a successful playwright whilst her brother Henri faces financial ruin as a result of some dodgy business dealings.   Elizabeth agrees to bail Henri out on condition that he disappears from the family for good.    A few years later, Junon discovers that she has the same illness that killed her first-born.  Ironically, Henri is a viable donor who could save her life.  Elizabeth’s unstable teenage son, Paul, takes the initiative and lures Henri back to his old home for what turns out to be an eventful Christmas family reunion...

In the deceptively titled Un conte de Noël, director Arnaud Desplechin offers a portrait of family disharmony that is a truly blood-chilling affair.  Recall that quaint rose-tinted view of family life, where parents and children lived together in domestic bliss, happy in each other’s company and always ready to lend each other succour in a time of crisis?   Desplechin must have missed that particular Disney movie and instead shows us something much nearer to reality, the proverbial family from Hell.  Think of it as King Lear without the hugs and kisses.

From the outset, we are spared none of the sublime detestation that the members of one hyper-dysfunctional middleclass family have for one another.  The eldest daughter callously blackmails her father into ostracising her brother because, in her eyes, he is a bad apple.  In the best tradition of Shakespearean tragedy and Marx Brothers farce, this outcast turns out to be the one person who can cure his mother of a life-threatening cancer via a bone marrow transplant.  Naturally, the son and his mother hate one another so much that they can’t resist trading insults even when they have agreed to go ahead with the operation (the only point of compatibilty between these two being their bone marrow).  The other members of this big happy family are not much better and when they all come together one Christmas peace on Earth and goodwill to all men are most definitely not on the agenda.  Heaven help us if any of this lot ever end up as UN peace envoys.

So, there isn’t much joy to be found in this film, a rambling epic of steaming waspish odium which makes the Siege of Mafeking look like a teddy bear’s picnic.  The characters have grown so used to their loathing for one another that they take it for granted and exchange acrid unpleasantries with the casual indifference of strangers swapping a half-hearted yuletide greeting.  Desplechin’s clinically cold mise-en-scène, which has all the reassuring comfort of the mortician’s slab, accentuates the stark lack of humanity that defines this family unit and evokes a subtly tragic quality that is more visceral than acerbic.  It is harder to imagine a bleaker, more distressing portrait of a collection of human beings than this.  After this, Harold Pinter will have you rolling in the aisles.

Even more sombre in tone than Desplechin’s morbid debut film La Sentinelle (1992), Un conte de Noël is the director’s darkest and most compelling film to date.  Whilst Desplechin’s own contribution is not to be downplayed, what most holds our attention are the impeccable contributions from a superlative ensemble cast.  Catherine Deneuve and Melvil Poupaud join Desplechin regulars Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny and Emmanuelle Devos in a stellar cast that could hardly fail to make this a tour de force for the man who is now rated one of France’s most capable auteur filmmakers.  The restrained, nuanced performances from an exceptional cast serve to heighten the dark humour in Desplechin’s deliciously cruel screenplay, leaving us in no doubt that when it comes to mutual loathing and collective backstabbing there is no place like home.  The film’s langourous pace and apparent dearth of emotion may be a little off-putting at first, but once you have seen the humorous side and have grown accustomed to the composed intellectual mudslinging it becomes weirdly addictive, like most blood sports.

© James Travers 2010

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