Un Conte de Noël

This is a schmaltz free French Royal Tenenbaums, and this film's virtue is that it never lets a single character become completely accounted for, as if everyone is continuously evolving or unraveling and exploring themselves throughout the drama. Indeed, self knowledge is a major theme of the film and the family's problems are to a certain extent based on the frustrating paradox of kindred mis-recognition (i.e. your family's known you forever but being around them only causes you to wonder how well they actually know you, and whether you even know yourself as well as you assume). In addition, the film's own numerous self-conscious peaks--the best of which is a family production of a play called Zorro while arch rival siblings torment each other a few floors above--raise the fascinating question that all wonderful cinema does: how much in our own lives is authentic? Are we merely fools on some social stage slavishly reciting scripted lines that seem appropriate? The other great lesson here is that mirth is sometimes buried beneath catastrophe, and only the French could avoid brutalizing this lesson with too much reconciliation or a high minded conclusion. Instead there's enough alcohol abuse and tobacco in this film to give the characters credibility but the right amount of confession and debate to keep them interesting.