Rent A Christmas Tale (2008)

Tinsel and Old Wounds - A Christmas Tale review by griggs

This felt suspiciously tailored to my tastes: a Christmas family reunion that’s less “pass the potatoes” and more “pass the judgement, then the salt for the old wounds.” The mood lands fast – sniping, sulking, then baffling tenderness just when you’re ready to leave.

On paper it’s pure melodrama bait – cancer, grief, long-term estrangement – the full festive buffet of pain. In practice, A Christmas Tale plays like Desplechin has wired a mic into a real house. It’s loose, talky, full of overlapping arguments and odd little asides, with the occasional formal flourish just to remind you someone’s directing this circus.

The cast don’t feel like actors; they feel like relatives you’d avoid sitting next to. Catherine Deneuve is a wonderfully brittle, half-amused matriarch, while Mathieu Amalric prowls around as the family’s live wire, all inappropriate honesty and buried hurt. It does sprawl, and a couple of subplots could be trimmed without much pain, but I came out moved, slightly wrung out, and weirdly comforted – which is about as honest as Christmas gets.