sundance

Timely release: A CHRISTMAS TALE

For better or for worse the holidays mean family – lots and lots of family. We make the trip back home, sleep on the fold-out couch and make strained conversation with the ornery aunt or cousin or brother no one really wanted to invite in the first place. Maybe this is why director Arnaud Desplechin titled his most recent effort about complicated and strained family relationships A CHRISTMAS TALE. Christmas and family, the two are synonymous. Desplechin’s tale follows the Vuillard’s, a family whose relationships are more strained than most, and what happens when they all come together to celebrate Christmas and wish their mother, Junon (Catherine Deneuve), well before her upcoming bone marrow transplant.