When ageing Junon (Catherine Deneuve) discovers she has a haematologic malignancy and will most certainly die without a bone marrow transplant, echoes of the death of her first child from leukaemia mean the upcoming Christmas season will be difficult for her whole family. Some have never moved on while others were conceived purely in the hope of curing the firstborn. When the family gets together to celebrate the season under the shadow of the requirement that one of them will provide a transplant for their matriarch, long-held resentments and passions will resurface.

With a roster of major characters that would make even the most attentive viewer begin to lose track, A Christmas Tale spends most of its time on Junon and Henri (Mathieu Amalric), with mixed results. Deneuve is inaccessible and often seems to be turning in her performance while on auto-pilot. Amalric, on the other hand, creates the most interesting of the main characters, and allows a little charm and wit into his performance of the black sheep.

Deneuve and Amalric are supported by a strong cast, most notably Jean-Paul Roussillon who is excellent as Junon’s lifelong love Abel. (That Abel is probably the most sane of the whole clan works in his favour, with the audience immediately sympathetic to his world view.) Chiara Mastroianni also steals scenes as their daughter-in-law Sylvia.

Part of the problem, however, is that this large cast of characters needs close monitoring from an audience to maintain an understanding of the subtleties of their respective lives, and yet many are so unappealing as to be repugnant. It isn’t that the script places good people in unfortunate circumstances and then plays them against each other – A Christmas Tale introduces a miserable bunch of people and then expects a degree of sympathy for them.

The film is punctuated by intertitles and fancy cinematographic technqiues like iris shots, while on several occasions characters turn to the audience and address them directly. The combination of these various artifices means that the audience is separated from the characters in a way that enhances the problem of them being so hard to like rather than ameliorating it.

It is always disappointing when a long-awaited film lets you down, and such is the case with A Christmas Tale. Headlining the Alliance Française French Film Festival, it will also achieve a limited release soon after.

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Diane Keaton is at the helm, and her brilliant performance is the keystone of the film. She is surrounded by a mostly flawless cast, who are varied enough to provide enough dramatic tension but at the same time form a convincing whole as the Stone family. Actually, ‘flawless’ may be going a little far, but I should point out that I find neither Dermot Mulroney (Must Love Dogs) nor Sarah Jessica Parker interesting enough to carry their own film. The former is looking more and more like Sylvester Stallone every day, and I could almost say the same about his actual performance – rather stoic and lacking in charisma. Sarah Jessica Parker’s Meredith is supposed to be the odd one out, and it seemed as if we should be siding or at least sympathising with her. This is hard to do, however, as apart from a two minute scene before the titles, we only get to see her through the Stone family’s eyes.

The fact that Parker and Mulroney were the central characters and yet I still liked the film is testament to the quality of the supporting performances. Rachel McAdams (Red Eye) is brilliant as the bitchy younger sister, and Craig T. Nelson (The Incredibles) delivers a powerful yet subtle performance that hints at the pain beneath his rather rational exterior. Luke Wilson proves in this film that he could have a decent career in ‘serious’ films if he so chose, and Claire Danes is wonderful as always, even if she gets very little screentime.

The Family Stone is a drama with a lot of character-based comedy, and it is only let down in the last act, which is a little too neat and doesn’t do justice to the rest of the film. I guess I should be thankful that the schmaltz wasn’t laid on until the very end, as a big ‘family Christmas’ movie always has the potential to make one want to gag. The script never lets us down, however, and there are practically no redundant lines or gratuitous exposition. In fact a lot of the film’s dramatic pull lies in what isn’t said, and some of the quieter moments featuring no dialogue are the most powerful.

An extraordinary cast and great direction make The Family Stone solid viewing, even if it fails to maintain its integrity towards the end.

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Following the triple thread of the Scottish, French and German frontline troops as they struggled through their first Christmas of the War, Joyeux Noël tells the remarkable story of the Christmas Eve ceasefire of 1914, when the warring parties came to agreement, put down arms, enjoyed a meal and some champagne together, and in doing so broke down the myths of war. They realised that their ‘enemies’ were just like themselves, and the hollow preaching of their superiors and governments could not change that fundamental fact.

Made in cooperation between the three European nations depicted, the film itself carries a powerful anti-war message, and it’s not hard to see at whom this may be directed in the current climate. Containing depictions of the use of propaganda and demonisation as motivation to commit acts not otherwise conceivable, and the abuse of the status of religion by those supposed to protect its precepts, it firmly criticises those who justify conflict on religious and fear-based grounds. The men learn the truth of the world, they see behind the curtains, and their refusal to betray their new-found knowledge leads to the most humane behaviour of the film – starkly contrasted with that of their ‘leaders’.

The avoidance of outright or overtly manipulative sentimentality, while allowing the tale to tell itself – there is no question that at its heart it is sentimental in nature – is one of the strongest points in its favour, and is more impressive given this is only the second feature film for director Christian Carion. It would be hard not to be moved to some feeling of Christmas cheer, seeing these men risk everything to experience an element of normality in a world that has fallen apart for each of them, and their longing for an emotional escape from their trenches to another time and place shames those of us who find Christmas only to be a commercial venture with too much food and drink.

Joyeux Noël is a little long, and certainly much of the subplot between Diane Kruger and Benno Fürmann could have been trimmed – in fact, it was hard to accept Kruger’s role in this piece at all, her presence an incongruity that consistently jarred. The impact of the final sequences may have been increased by more punchy direction, although there is no question that the response of the Army superiors and Goverment officials to the actions of their men carries one of the most important points to be made.

That this is a sentimental story told in a mildly sentimental way should not diminish the power of these events. That it makes comment on the actions of the powerful of today, while still telling a simple but moving tale of yesterday, gives an intellectual depth to the emotional heart. Highly recommended.

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