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Arthouse: A Christmas Tale

Speaking of Mathieu Amalric (see Quantum of Solace), he’s the dysfunctional dynamo at the heart of Arnaud Desplechin’s fabuloso family epic, playing the black sheep of a sprawling clan home (and squabbling) for the holidays. This is no ordinary Christmas picture, friends: it’s French. Think Renoir. Put yourself in the hands of Desplechin (Kings and Queen, My Sex Life...) for two and half hours and see if you ever view cinema the same again. No one has a surer hand with character or a more dizzying array of tones and narrative modes to pack into each exhilaratingly combustive scene. As always, he’s assembled France’s finest players for the ensemble mischief, including Catherine Deneuve as a dying matriarch. See it now and get over Christmas before Hollywood rolls out its annual shit parade of maudlin, ho-ho horrible garbage.

Posted on 09/22/07 by: FilmCatcher5 11:55 AM