The Lewis clan is in for a very different Christmas in Anna Condo’s debut feature
MERRY CHRISTMAS (Anna Condo, 2013)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
December 6-26
212-924-3363
www.cinemavillage.com
www.merrychristmasthemovie.com
“I don’t think that this is going to be a boring weekend,” one character says early on in Anna Condo’s debut feature, Merry Christmas. It turns out she couldn’t be more wrong, for the misguided film feels like it goes on for a weekend, even though it’s a mere eighty-three minutes long. Hit hard by the financial crisis, a wealthy New York City family ends up spending its Christmas in a Pennsylvania B&B instead of Aspen, playing a murder-mystery game set in and around a 1974 disco lounge. As the family members move in and out of character, real feelings emerge as they discuss God and Satan, Freud and finance, Park Ave. and the ghetto, race and Fox News, and how much a homeless stranger looks like Charles Manson. Condo, who was born in Armenia, raised in France, and is married to artist George Condo, directed and edited Merry Christmas (and chose the crazy costumes); there is no writer credit because the film, shot in two and a half days on location, is completely improvised. Each actor was given a one-page outline of their character, and each scene was done in one take, without rehearsal. Condo then took three years to edit the film. If this is what she chose to include, we’d hate to see what ended up on the cutting-room floor. Part reality show, part Arrested Development rip-off, Merry Christmas is most severely hampered by a collection of characters you wouldn’t want to spend five minutes with, let alone nearly an hour and a half. The cast includes Alexandra Stewart as clueless family matriarch Maya Dawn Lewis, Antony Langdon as the bitterly annoying Ted, Elizabeth Jasicki as late arriver Janice Black, Eleonore Condo (daughter of Anna and George) as teenage Lily Lazarus, Martin Pfefferkorn as the homeless stranger (who actually looks a lot more like Denis Lavant’s character in Leos Carax’s Merde than Manson), Tibor Feldman as Lewis attorney Leon, and real-life innkeeper Darlene Elders as Kay, the owner of the B&B. In Suzi Forbes Chase’s Recommended Bed & Breakfasts: Mid-Atlantic States, the author writes, “Innkeeper Darlene Elders has a theme for her bed-and-breakfast, and it goes like this: ‘If every day were Christmas, our hearts would be filled with loving, giving, caring, and sharing every day — not just at Christmas.’” Unfortunately, there’s not much to love about Merry Christmas, which opens December 6 at Cinema Village; Anna Condo, Eleonore Condo, Feldman, and Jasicki will participate in a Q&A following the 3:15 screening on Sunday, December 8.