IF Ingmar Bergman and Wes Anderson some how collaborated on a movie together, I’d guess their sensibilities would yield something like Arnaud Desplechin’s darkly hilarious, brilliantly acted “A Christmas Tale.”
The setting is a rambling French country house in which a wildly dysfunctional French family has reveled in melancholy since the death of a child decades earlier.
For five years, the eldest adult child, Elizabeth (Anne Consigny), an uptight playwright, has banished her black-sheep brother, art dealer Henri (Mathieu Amalric of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and “Quantum of Solace”).
Henri, who was specifically conceived by his parents to provide a transplant to save his doomed older brother, arrived too late.
And he has been a bitter disappointment to Elizabeth ever since, a drunken wreck whose debts she paid off on condition he would stay away from the family.
But he’s invited home for the holidays because death is calling again on the Vuillard family. The only thing that might save their mother, Junon (Catherine Deneuve), from an excruciating demise is a bone-marrow transplant.
Elizabeth is furious that Henri is a compatible donor while she is not.
She’d prefer Junon be saved by the only other possible donor, her schizophrenic teenage son, Paul (Emile Berling). That prospect that does not thrill the boy’s mathematician father, Claude (Hippolyte Girardot), who calculates the survival chances for Junon – as well as for the donors, who are at risk themselves.
This hardly sounds like a comedy – and in many ways it isn’t. But there is much dark humor in the tortured interactions of the two siblings, as well as between the vain, self-centered Junon and her devoted but long-suffering husband, Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon).
Also visiting the Vuillard estate in the northern French city of Roubaix is the youngest son, Ivan (Melvil Poupaud), who is seemingly happily married to Sylvia (Chiara Mastroianni), the mother of his two young sons – who actually stage a show burlesquing their aunt and uncle’s feud.
But during the festivities, Sylvia learns a longtime secret involving Henri, Ivan and Junon’s nephew Simon (Laurent Capelluto), a shy painter who is also hanging around. As is Faunia (Emmanuelle Devos), Henri’s Jewish girlfriend.
Not at all schmaltzy or sentimental, “A Christmas Tale” may be the perfect Christmas movie for people who hate Christmas movies. I love it.
A CHRISTMAS TALE
(Un Conte de Noel)
****
One of the year’s best.
In French with English subtitles. Running time: 120 minutes. Not rated (disturbing themes, sexuality). At the Lincoln Plaza and the IFC Center.