A Christmas Tale (2008)
(Un conte de Noël)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 150m
Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, Mathieu Amalric, Hippolyte Girardot, Emmanuelle Devos
Synopsis:
The medical travails of a bourgeois family from Roubaix come to a head one Christmas when the only compatible bone marrow donor to give the grandmother a chance of surviving leukaemia turns out to be either her mentally unbalanced grandson or the son she once disowned and her sister banished from the family six years previously.
Review:
Desplechin's magnificently sleek chamber cinema finds its perfect outlet in this dysfunctional family study, one of a rash of films at the time which examined the effects of the selfish generation (60s/70s) on the precious bourgeois family unit. This was the best, combining as it did all the concerns of those films, from inheritance to internecene struggles for survival; there is little in the way of hugging here, save between one daugher-in-law and her husband's cousin!
(Un conte de Noël)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 150m
Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, Mathieu Amalric, Hippolyte Girardot, Emmanuelle Devos
Synopsis:
The medical travails of a bourgeois family from Roubaix come to a head one Christmas when the only compatible bone marrow donor to give the grandmother a chance of surviving leukaemia turns out to be either her mentally unbalanced grandson or the son she once disowned and her sister banished from the family six years previously.
Review:
Desplechin's magnificently sleek chamber cinema finds its perfect outlet in this dysfunctional family study, one of a rash of films at the time which examined the effects of the selfish generation (60s/70s) on the precious bourgeois family unit. This was the best, combining as it did all the concerns of those films, from inheritance to internecene struggles for survival; there is little in the way of hugging here, save between one daugher-in-law and her husband's cousin!
(Un conte de Noël)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 150m
Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, Mathieu Amalric, Hippolyte Girardot, Emmanuelle Devos
Synopsis:
The medical travails of a bourgeois family from Roubaix come to a head one Christmas when the only compatible bone marrow donor to give the grandmother a chance of surviving leukaemia turns out to be either her mentally unbalanced grandson or the son she once disowned and her sister banished from the family six years previously.
Review:
Desplechin's magnificently sleek chamber cinema finds its perfect outlet in this dysfunctional family study, one of a rash of films at the time which examined the effects of the selfish generation (60s/70s) on the precious bourgeois family unit. This was the best, combining as it did all the concerns of those films, from inheritance to internecene struggles for survival; there is little in the way of hugging here, save between one daugher-in-law and her husband's cousin!