The family involves parents, children, grandchildren, spouses, a girlfriend and others. I will not name all of them and their relationships because what use is that kind of information if you haven't seen them and don't know who I'm talking about? For example, Junon Vuillard (Catherine Deneuve) and her husband Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon) have had four children, each one arriving with a different emotional meaning, but even in explaining this the movie grows murky, like a cousin at a family reunion telling you who the great-aunts of the in-laws are.
More to the point is the quietly playful approach of the director, Arnaud Desplechin, who seems to be demonstrating that "A Christmas Tale" is a movie that could have been made in several different tones, and showing us how he would have handled each of them. That leads to a wide range of musical genres, mood swings from solemn to the ribald, and always the peculiarity of the Deneuve character's cheerful detachment from her fate. She's like someone preparing for a familiar journey.
Desplechin doesn't focus on her troubles with a grim intensity. Sometimes he seems to looking for ways to distract himself. For example, he is obviously familiar with Hitchcock's greatest film, "Vertigo," which has no themes in common with this one. If you happen to have a video on hand, go to 25 minutes and 52 seconds into it, and watch what follows in the art gallery, as Jimmy Stewart stealthily approaches Kim Novak from behind. While you're at it, watch the whole film.
When you're watching "A Christmas Tale," Desplechin's homage to that scene is unmistakable. It's not a shot-by-shot transposition, nor is the score a literal lift from Bernard Herrmann. They're evocations, uncannily familiar. The proof is, you'll see exactly what I saw when I watched the film. Now why does Desplechin do that? For fun, I think. Just showing off, the way I sneak some e. e. cummings lines into my Answer Man column this week, for no better reason than that I could. Of course a homage has to work just as well if you don't know its source. In fact, it may work better, because you're not distracted by the connection. But nothing like a little Value-Added, as the British say.
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