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A Christmas Tale

A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël)

Movie · 2008 · 15 people

Arnaud Desplechin directed the 2008 French comedy-drama Un conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale) and co-wrote the script with Emmanuel Bourdieu; Pascal Caucheteux produced. At roughly two and a half hours, it follows a large, quarrelsome family reunited in Roubaix for Christmas. It competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2008, earned nine César nominations and won Jean-Paul Roussillon the César for best supporting actor.

At its centre is the Vuillard family. Junon (Catherine Deneuve) learns that unless she receives a bone-marrow transplant she has only months to live, and the scattered family gathers at the home of her husband Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon). Anne Consigny plays their daughter Elizabeth, and Mathieu Amalric plays Henri, who has been estranged since Elizabeth paid his debts six years earlier. Elizabeth's sixteen-year-old son Paul has mental health problems and needs clinical treatment. Melvil Poupaud, Emmanuelle Devos and Chiara Mastroianni complete the main cast. As relatives are tested for a matching donor, old resentments, rivalries and unexpected closeness come to the surface.

Shooting took place in Roubaix in 2007, with music by Grégoire Hetzel. The production company was Why Not Productions.

DirectorArnaud Desplechin
Production companyWhy Not Productions

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Cast

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Catherine Deneuve Catherine Deneuve Film actor · 83 years old Philippe Morier-Genoud Philippe Morier-Genoud Actor · 82 years old Jean-Paul Roussillon Mathieu Amalric Anne Consigny Melvil Poupaud Emmanuelle Devos Chiara Mastroianni Hippolyte Girardot Azize Kabouche Beata Nilska Émile Berling François Regnault Françoise Bertin Hélène Roussel

Titles sharing this cast

Through different eyes

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

Rather than tying a crowded family film to a single dramatic axis, Desplechin builds it like a mosaic: illness, the search for a donor, an old debt and an estranged brother each collide under one roof in their own register. The dramatic-comedy label fits; the film moves freely between pain and mockery, and those tonal shifts are the script's boldest move. Its Cannes competition slot and nine César nominations come as no surprise. That breadth has a price, though: some supporting characters appear in only a handful of scenes, and the story sometimes scatters. Rich for a patient viewer, tiring for an impatient one.

Family Viewer Asks whether the whole household can watch it; cares about humour and heart.

It may have Christmas in the title, but this is not a holiday film. There is a terminal illness, long-held family grudges and a teenager with psychiatric problems. It is long and built on talk. It is not a good pick for watching with children; they would get bored and the weight of the subject would be too much. For adults, especially those who like thinking about family relationships, it is a good choice.

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

What makes the film interesting is how it shows the family as a web of obligations. A son cut off from the family over a debt his sister paid years ago, and the search for a donor who can give the mother bone marrow, put blood ties to the test both literally and figuratively: who owes what to whom, and who can expect what from whom? A scattered family gathering at the father's house in a northern town like Roubaix captures well the modern European family, distant yet bound to one another. The film passes no moral verdict; it prefers to leave these questions open.

These are not reader reviews: they are short editorial takes written from different viewer perspectives with AI assistance. Reader reviews are below.

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