A CHRISTMAS TALE concludes BAMcinématek’s “Deneuve” series in high style
A CHRISTMAS TALE (UN CONTE DE NOËL) (Arnaud Desplechin, 2008)
BAMcinématek
BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Thursday, March 31, 6:30, 9:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
One of the best films of 2008, A Christmas Tale (Un Conte de Noël) is yet another extraordinary work from French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin (La Sentinelle, Esther Kahn). Desplechin, who examined family dysfunction in the masterful Kings and Queen (one of the best films of 2006), brings back much of that film’s cast in A Christmas Tale. Catherine Deneuve stars as Junon, the family matriarch who has just discovered she has leukemia and is in need of a bone-marrow transplant. Although it is rare for children to donate bone marrow to their mother (or grandmother), Junon insists that they all take the test to see if they are compatible. Soon they gather at Junon and Abel’s (Jean-Paul Roussilon) house for the holidays: oldest daughter Elizabeth (Anne Consigny), a dark and depressed woman whose teenage son, Paul (Emile Berling), has been institutionalized with mental problems and whose husband, Claude (Hippolyte Girardot), is rarely home; Ivan (Melvil Poupaud), the youngest son, a carefree sort married to Sylvia (Chiara Mastroianni, Deneuve’s real-life daughter), whom Junon strongly distrusts; and black sheep Henri (Mathieu Almaric), the middle child who was initially conceived primarily to save Abel and Junon’s first son, Joseph, who ended up dying of the same leukemia that Junon has contracted. Henri, who shows up with a new girlfriend, the very direct Faunia (Emmanuelle Devos), is a philandering ne’er-do-well who is deeply estranged from Elizabeth and not close with his mother, leading to much strife as Christmas — and a possible transplant — nears. Desplechin, who wrote the script with Emmanuel Bourdieu, once again has created powerful, realistic characters portrayed marvelously by his extremely talented cast; despite the family’s massive dysfunction, you’ll feel that even spending more than two and a half hours with them is not enough. A Christmas Tale concludes BAMcinématek’s month-long “Deneuve” series in high style.