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A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël)

• Directed by Arnaud Desplechin
• Written by Arnaud Desplechin and Emmanuel Bourdieu
• Starring Catherine Deneuve, Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny
• Classification: NA
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It sure ain't the Christmas of Dickens's imaginings. Dysfunctional overachievers all, the Vuillards are a family bizarre enough to make the Royal Tenenbaums look like candidates for a Hallmark card. As they gather for the festive season, and ghosts of tragedies past compete with demons of time present, the battleground is drawn. But, this being France, the weapons of choice have a knife-edge sophistication dipped in playful irony; indeed, never have enmity and ennui seemed so sprightly. Nearly 2 hours later, not much is resolved, but there is a Yuletide miracle of sorts, no less profound for being so mundane: Amid the tears that irrigate the laughter, and the sorrow that cultivates the joy, la vie continue.

We start with death and love. Joseph, the first-born son of Abel and his wife, Junon (Jean-Paul Roussillon and Catherine Deneuve), died from leukemia at the tender age of 6. But the aging couple, whose mutual affection is still palpable and tender, surmounted the tragedy to bear three more children, all of them grown into talented yet fragile adults. Now, late in life, Junon has herself contracted the same cancer, and, for any hope of survival, requires a bone-marrow transplant from a compatible donor — her kids, and their kids, are the only possible candidates. So, as Christmas approaches, the scattered offspring convene at the parents' home, bearing, among other dubious gifts, the results of their blood tests. Says the matriarch with characteristically cold sarcasm: "Thanks to my disease, we're being reunited."

That's the obvious metaphor running through the entire piece — the genetic inheritances, diseased and otherwise, that can bind us together or drive us apart, sometimes simultaneously. For example, the two oldest siblings haven't spoken to each other in five long years. A successful playwright, Elizabeth (Anne Consigny) is a melancholic depressive; by contrast, Henri, the theatre producer (Mathieu Amalric), is a manic drunk. Their younger brother, Ivan (Melvil Poupaud), who was beset by devils himself back in his teenage years, has since matured into the role of intermediary between the embittered twosome. But theirs is a war rooted deep in the psychic marrow, far beyond the reach of any mere peacemaker.

The blood relatives convene, then, along with spouses and girlfriends and the next generation, teens and toddlers already displaying the seeds of future torments. It's quite the ménage, but director Arnaud Desplechin sifts adroitly, even breezily, through the backstories and the gloomy baggage. That's because his style is as light as the substance is heavy. Borrowing from the New Wave, he uses key-hole lenses, he has his characters addressing the camera, and, via the family TV set, he splices in quotes from classic movies — Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Fred Astaire in Funny Face, Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. Despite occasional bouts of tedium over the epic course, a surprising buoyancy emerges: Desplechin's methods begin to inform, even brighten, the message.

In fact, his methods have their counterpart in the behaviour of the family members themselves. Their swords cut deeply — a mother can deny her son, a sister her brother — but the swordplay is always conducted with intelligent panache and with an amused irony that is detached but also (in both senses of the word) engaging. Yes, it takes a terrific cast — and perhaps only a terrific French cast — to perform such a balancing act.

But the script helps too. There's definitely an element of play in the swordplay (screenplay too), a recognition of the artifice that underlies so much of family melodrama. This notion is reinforced by the film's abundant theatrical imagery and by the pageant of Christmas itself. So when Henri confesses, "We're in the midst of a myth and I don't know what it is," he's not talking as a Christian but as a participant in a more universal drama — confused, acting out, and yet, even while struggling, happy to strut on life's stage.

And not always struggling. Watch for a lovely sequence where three patent unbelievers venture out to midnight mass, find delight in the spectacle, if nothing else, and then, through a thin carpet of virgin snow, trip homeward with an unfeigned lightness in their step. Tomorrow, they will trudge again, but, tonight, serendipity dances and its flurry of glad tidings is something close to joy.