A Christmas Tale [etc.]

This French holiday feast from Arnaud Desplechin is de trop – too much packed in, too many characters and story threads, too many stylistic hijinks, too many references and allusions. As stuffed as it is, this repast requires a second helping, just too dense and yet diffuse to take in at a single sitting. A family gathers for Christmas in the provincial city of Roubaix, where the mother is diagnosed with leukemia and requires a bone marrow transplant from a compatible donor. Is anyone in this family really compatible? The mother (Catherine Deneuve) is regal and remote, the father is troll-like but genial, and the kids are messed up, largely it seems because their elder brother died at the age of six. The elder sister (Anne Consigny) has banished one of the brothers from the family, for reasons that remain hard to fathom, though goodness knows the Mathieu Amalric character would be enough to try anyone’s patience. Melvil Poupard is the younger brother, married to Chiara Mastrioanni (in one of the many inside jokes of the film, her real mother – Deneuve – dismisses her as boring, but I loved to watch her performance and see the genes of her famous parents express themselves in the play of her face). Desplechin muse Emmanuelle Devos turns up as Amalric’s girlfriend. So the movie has real Gallic star power to go with its familiar set-up, plus all the Truffaut, Nietzsche, Shakespeare – whatever – that the auteur can cram in. But unlike Olivier Assayas’ recent and not-dissimilar SummerHours, in which I understood, despite indirection and elision, exactly what each family member was thinking and feeling, here I remained on the outside looking in, however mesmerizing the scene going on behind the window of the family home. (2008, dvd) *7* (MC-84)

Another film that was a tad too French for my taste was Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress (2008, Sundance, MC-78). Yeah sure, l’amour fou, but the crazier the love, the less I get it. In 1830s France, a lush-lipped playboy renounces his longtime mistress, a Spanish fireball played by Asia Argento, for marriage to a virginal aristocrat. But the flamenco hottie refuses to be cast aside, even though their relationship is predicated on hate as much as love, not to mention the torrid sex on a tiger-headed rug. The film certainly looks good and has its moments, but the relationships are too kinky to make sense for the likes of me, more vampire horror than comprehensible romance, however weighted with doom.

I prefer my Frenchiness diluted a bit by British qualities, so I much preferred Cheri (2009, dvd, MC-63), Stephen Frears’ adaptation of two Colette novels. A very handsome production of the Belle Epoque, it tells of a society of aging but highly successful courtesans, as they negotiate their respective retirements. My recommendation of this film comes down to two words: Michelle Pfeiffer. At 50 she is still entrancingly beautiful, but not afraid to show her age in a longtime affair with decades-younger Rupert Friend, as the son of fellow-courtesan Kathy Bates. At barely ninety minutes, this is not a film that tries to do too much, but Michelle herself is quite enough.