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Special Features
New, restored high-definition digital transfer
L'aimee: Desplechin's 2007 documentary
New documentary featuring interviews with Desplechin and actors
Original theatrical trailers
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Philip Lopate
L'aimee: Desplechin's 2007 documentary
New documentary featuring interviews with Desplechin and actors
Original theatrical trailers
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Philip Lopate
Editorial Reviews
In Arnaud Desplechin's beguiling A Christmas Tale (Un conte de No‰l), Catherine Deneuve brings her legendary poise to the role of Junon, matriarch of the troubled Vuillard family, who come together at Christmas after she learns she needs a bone marrow transplant from a blood relative. That simple family reunion setup, however, can't begin to describe the unpredictable, emotionally volatile experience of this film, an inventive, magical drama that's equal parts merriment and melancholy. Unrequited childhood loves and blinding grudges, brutal outbursts and sudden slapstick, music, movies, and poetry, A Christmas Tale ties it all together in a marvelously messy package.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
36 of 40 people found the following review helpful
Format:Blu-ray
This one is not for everyone. Most people will probably not only have trouble with its length, but its style, as well. Both as wild as it is imaginative, Christmas Tale is like a post-modern jazz score, mixing elements from a variety of cinematic styles that are jarring (at times), but always interesting to behold. As long as the film is, it always keeps moving and changing before our very eyes. What makes its odd stylistic combinations work is the compelling depths of its explorations into family and the bonds the unite, or divide us. Like and The Royal Tennenbaums, with a nouvelle vague twist, the film is not only full of odd combinations of image and music, but seems to jump from one film to another from scene to scene, as if each character or emotional quality (from light comedy to serious drama) were each receiving its own rendering. At times, the characters turn and speak directly to the camera. The filmmaker also intercedes by providing chapter headings and keyhole views, but, somehow, what could have become a cacophony of chaos, turns into a wonderment of cinema that any real cinephile will be amazed to behold and want to experience again....
20 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
French director Arnaud Desplechin's film works as one of the best mult-layered movies of the genre, which in many respects takes its conventions and turns them on their head. Not your feel good, holiday coming home movie but one which inverts and mischievously perverts viewer expectations and instead dares to substitute real people for the usual suspects. The first rate acting (the legendary Catherine Deneuve and the not as well known but no less talented Desplechin actors Mathieu Almaric and Emmanuelle Devos) takes a conventional genre situation - mother (Denueve) suffers from cancer and needs a bone marrow transplant - and explores the generational conflicts that afflict this family and provocatively and evocatively deals with the issues of mother love; forgiveness; sibling rivalry; grief for thwarted dreams and life changing losses, and even fidelity itself. For film lovers who enjoy characters in unconventional situations, this film will continue to reward upon future viewings. Those requiring conventional Hollywood plotting and endings should probably look elsewhere. I would add that the director is one of the best working today. One of the best films of 2008.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
[4.5 stars] It may be a mistake to call this a "dysfunctional family Christmas movie." The individuals of the Vuillard family have, in fact, all submitted themselves to the precise roles that will allow the family to function. And that is the real problem. Each has to contort himself, at times almost beyond human recognition, in order for things to make a certain sort of sense. There is distance in how they address each other: no "maman", no "papa", just first names all around. The system that allows this family to function even includes "Anatole," an imaginary wolf that lives in the basement. It is a well-honed system.
The mother, father, three siblings, assorted cousins and spouses that populate this family tree all have a psychic tie to a withered root, namely the firstborn son, Joseph, who died of a rare cancer at age six. Elizabeth, the oldest surviving child, complains of a grief that has no apparent source. She is the type of person we all have met at some time in our lives, someone whose main grievance is that she feels herself to be inadequately aggrieved. She completely surrenders herself to the false martyrdom of self-pity, willingly clutching each grudge to her bosom, even as it drains her of life and poisons everyone around her.
We see how Henri, the middle child, becomes Elizabeth's chosen victim, and Ivan, the youngest, tries to mollify everyone. All of this has a decidedly theatrical effect. The family members are depicted as performers just as much as the Ekdahls are in Fanny and Alexander (Special Edition Five-Disc Set) - Criterion Collection, with whose first 90 minutes A CHRISTMAS TALE bears more than a passing resemblance. This masquerade also has, as a point of reference, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, both in the brief appearance of the 1935 movie on the TV screen, and in Mendelssohn's incidental music, playing on the soundtrack.
The directorial style of this film is something all its own. It uses film grammar from every era of cinema history, throwing it all into one big pot. Somehow it works. I kept thinking of Harold Bloom's assertion that "strangeness" is the quality that distinguishes lasting works of art. There is the strangeness that so assimilates us that we no longer see it as strange: Shakespeare, Griffith, Hitchcock. And there is the strangeness that cannot be assimilated: Sterne, Beckett, Buñuel.
A CHRISTMAS TALE possesses the latter variety of strangeness. You're not going to pull this out and watch it every holiday season. But you may choose to see it repeatedly for the fascinating, dreamlike dance in the interaction of its characters.
The mother, father, three siblings, assorted cousins and spouses that populate this family tree all have a psychic tie to a withered root, namely the firstborn son, Joseph, who died of a rare cancer at age six. Elizabeth, the oldest surviving child, complains of a grief that has no apparent source. She is the type of person we all have met at some time in our lives, someone whose main grievance is that she feels herself to be inadequately aggrieved. She completely surrenders herself to the false martyrdom of self-pity, willingly clutching each grudge to her bosom, even as it drains her of life and poisons everyone around her.
We see how Henri, the middle child, becomes Elizabeth's chosen victim, and Ivan, the youngest, tries to mollify everyone. All of this has a decidedly theatrical effect. The family members are depicted as performers just as much as the Ekdahls are in Fanny and Alexander (Special Edition Five-Disc Set) - Criterion Collection, with whose first 90 minutes A CHRISTMAS TALE bears more than a passing resemblance. This masquerade also has, as a point of reference, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, both in the brief appearance of the 1935 movie on the TV screen, and in Mendelssohn's incidental music, playing on the soundtrack.
The directorial style of this film is something all its own. It uses film grammar from every era of cinema history, throwing it all into one big pot. Somehow it works. I kept thinking of Harold Bloom's assertion that "strangeness" is the quality that distinguishes lasting works of art. There is the strangeness that so assimilates us that we no longer see it as strange: Shakespeare, Griffith, Hitchcock. And there is the strangeness that cannot be assimilated: Sterne, Beckett, Buñuel.
A CHRISTMAS TALE possesses the latter variety of strangeness. You're not going to pull this out and watch it every holiday season. But you may choose to see it repeatedly for the fascinating, dreamlike dance in the interaction of its characters.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
I'm Glad They Don't Live Next Door to Me
A Christmas Tale, "Un Conte de Noel," (2008). This unconventional tale of a dysfunctional family's agonizingly strained, animosity-filled Christmas reunion was written and... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Stephanie DePue
Holiday Spun
This film is always entertaining and inventive, though its pacing does provide a few pauses in action to let you check in with yourself about what you've just seen. Read more
Published 7 months ago by A. Mays
No Thanks
I'm 40 minutes into this film, and have had to make a decision. Seeing how long it is, am I interested enough to go the duration? No, I'm not. Read more
Published 8 months ago by SanDiegoJesse
Chilly and uninvolving
A dysfunctional French family gathers for Christmas for several days of confrontation and angst.
The fine cast kept me engaged for the film's lengthy running time, but... Read more
The fine cast kept me engaged for the film's lengthy running time, but... Read more
Published 9 months ago by David Bonesteel
enigmatic messy luminous
ALERT- there are spoilers here:
This film is maddening in that the characters on many levels are completely unsympathetic... Read more
This film is maddening in that the characters on many levels are completely unsympathetic... Read more
Published 16 months ago by lyceemoliere
Wonderful
A Christmas Tale has become one of our favorite holiday movies. Stricken with a rare form of bone cancer, a family matriarch (Catherine Deneuve, still ravishing at 68) must turn to... Read more
Published 17 months ago by pkgoode
Should have learned my lesson with 'Kings and Queen'
I'll take a flyer on many French movies - you never know when you'll run across a delight like Monsieur Ibrahim or I've Loved You So Long, or outright, blow-you-away classics like... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Andy Orrock
Not your usual Christmas story
Wonderfully acted dark tale of family strife and the different dynamics that bring joy and pain. Catherine Deneuve is stellar in her performance as the matriarch of this... Read more
Published on January 10, 2010 by Victoria Telford
Disappointly Bad
I like some French films: this film has too many gaps in logical flow, too much irritating interference by the director, and the resolution to the key mystery is missing. Read more
Published on December 28, 2009 by Stephen McHenry
A great film about family ties.
This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film
A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël) is a film about a family in suburban France. Read more
A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël) is a film about a family in suburban France. Read more
Published on December 28, 2009 by Ted
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