I highly recommend A Christmas Tale to anybody who plans to offer a year-end best-of list or to vote in a Best of 2008 survey.

It's an extravagant family epic, full of characters who are as intriguing as they are maddeningly wicked. And yet, there are mysterious grace notes played throughout, saving the film from being a soulless celebration of bad behavior. I'll probably have to see it a couple more times before I have any sense of what the film is really *about*. But I'm so dazzled by the film's playful style, its grand performances which teeter between melodrama and comedy, and by the consistently surprising storytelling, that I can't wait to find the time to see it again.

If I ever get around to writing the review I hope to write, I'll be mentioning a host of films that are either excerpted within the film, clearly referenced, or referenced in subtle allusions... and a few that came to mind even though I doubt the director intended them to:

• The Ten Commandments
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Funny Girl
• Jesus of Montreal
• The Royal Tenenbaums
• Heading South
• The Celebration
• Private Fears in Public Places

... for starters.

It's one of those films like Yi-Yi (A One and a Two) that leaves me powerfully satisfied, exasperated, and exhausted, as if I've just enjoyed a great Thanksgiving meal with an intolerable family.

I'm obviously the minority report. I've been seeing lots of raves for this, but I found it way too long and way to complicated. I did like all the films that show up, but couldn't quite see how they fit.

But at least Catherine Deneuve still looks good!

Loved it! And it's a very lively film. I have a short review in Paste this issue. I adore that moment on the swing between Mathieu Amalric and Catherine Deneuve. Ah, the French.

Caveat: Turned it on after 10 p.m. and didn’t finish it until 12:55 a.m. this morning. Not ideal conditions for viewing, but I have a deadline of today to watch films for year-end viewing. Had Jeffrey not pushed this one, I’m not sure I would’ve made it a priority.

I’m glad I did. The first half is smashing, as the film introduces myriad characters, sets its story in motion, and changes perspective from time to time (characters address the camera directly).

The second half I’m not so sure about. Not only did sleepiness start to overwhelm me – I fought the good fight, but yielded a few battles before winning the war and completing the film – but the film became very, uh, French. I wasn’t sure what one particular woman was up to, or what the back story was between her and two of the male characters. I found some of this portion of the film way to blasé and offputting, but it came relatively late in the film (didn’t it?), and I was so invested in some of the other, more prominent storylines, that I forgave the film its certain bizarre (IMO) interludes.

Very, very well made.

Jeff, I'm surprised that you didn't include The New World in your list of reference points. The film pretty clearly shows at least two of the characters looking at the poster for that film.

FWIW, I saw this on a screener -- it was one of those screeners where there's a digital clock counting the frames and seconds of each and every shot -- and I saw it here at home under less-than-ideal conditions. But my SENSE of the film was that it was very interesting, but it didn't quite grab me -- partly because, as Christian puts it, it becomes "very, uh, French" towards the end. I wonder if I would have reacted to it differently if I had seen it on the big screen. (My personal favorite French film of the year is Summer Hours, and I wonder if THAT film would have worked so well for me if I had seen it outside of the carefully-controlled confines of a movie theatre.)

Anyway, as it stands right now, this film probably won't make my year-end top ten, but I'm wondering if anyone can mount a convincing case as to why it SHOULD make the list, and what I should be looking for if I get around to watching the screener again.

Well, I shared some thoughts about it in my CT column on Christmas movies, but if I wrote a longer review, I'd go into how well it works as an exhibition of great ensemble acting, about the way it made me care about these characters no matter how despicably they behaved, and the unpredictability of it. But overall, I just keep thinking about these people, their troubles, their grudges, their relationships, and the strange glue that holds them all together.

I received a comment on my blog from someone today who linked to his blog about it, and I'm delighted to find someone who feels similarly. And *he* talks about the New World connection. (I thought it was a strange reference. It didn't make sense to me, so I didn't write about it.)

Your first 'graph sounds kind of similar to what I might write about Summer Hours, except there, the characters are NOT so badly behaved, and they are NOT held together all that well (the forces of globalization pulling each branch of the family into different parts of the world, etc.). But it is, itself, unpredictable in its own way and has some great ensemble acting, etc. So I continue to wonder if my different reactions to these films is a statement on the films themselves or on the different environments in which I saw them.

BTW, in your CT Movies article, you call the film "R-rated". Based on what? FilmRatings.com doesn't seem to have an entry for this film, and the IMDb says that the film is both "Not Rated" and "Unrated". (Here in British Columbia, it's PG, but in Ontario, it's the equivalent of PG-13, for whatever that's worth.)