Perhaps my hatred for this film was bred largely by the disgusting ploy that was the marketing strategy.  The trailer for U.S. audiences leads viewers to believe they’re going to see a french version of The Family Stone - a film half-comedy, half-drama - that faces both the horrors and beauties of family love and dysfunction with its tongue in its cheek.  But if you watch the original french trailer, you’ll see the contrast - and the manipulation of the film’s American distributor is revealed most grossly.

Why is this difference necessary?  Because (this distributor knows) American audiences, of course, haven’t the intelligence to go see a Christmas drama; we here in the states want our holiday films light and fluffy.  We are used to Hollywood’s version of the truth, glitzed over with the happy-go-lucky soundtracks (note the difference in music between the french and english trailers).  While there is a sad truth to this fact, the error comes in the marketing’s management of expectation.  While the vast Wall-E person majority of U.S. audiences will indeed only be seeing such films as Four Christmases and Bolt this season (leaving aside the truly artistic films, such as The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and Synecdoche, New York), there are those in the states whose tastes are more discerning - and who would appreciate a slow-paced, thoughtful drama.  But even the most discerning audience member who shells out $20 expecting to see Bolt will be pissed as hell when Requiem for a Dream plays...

And so, in trying to increase ticket sales, this distributor has made enemies of much of their target audience - and turned viewers such as myself vehemently against them.

That said, let’s forget about the marketing and take a close look at the narrative mess that is A Christmas Tale...

I understand the title is intended to be sarcastic, and perhaps there is also humor within the film that is lost in cultural translation.  But hundreds of other international dark comedies (The Barbarian Invasions, Antonia’s Line) have transcended cultural differences - so to argue a difference in cultural sensitivity holds only so much water.  True quality overcomes, and human is human.

What Arnaud Desplechin & Emmanuel Bourdieu failed to recognize when structuring this story is that humanity requires some positive attributes.  An audience goes to the movies to a) be entertained / escape or b) have insights into the human condition (or, ideally, a combination of both).  A Christmas Tale provides neither entertainment nor insight, as its cast is a loathsome bunch of children so despicably annoying that they are incapable of teaching anything, much less providing any entertainment.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that no scene ever hangs around long enough for an audience to really settle into anything.  Five lines of dialogue desperately trying to be clever, and we cut to a new scene that is entirely unrelated to that which preceded it; another new character is introduced - this one as pathetic as the last.  He or she speaks a sentence or two, then we’re on to another scene in yet another dull story.  Never is there time for any tenderness between the characters, so the audience can never root for any person or relationship.

And so the film drags on for nearly three endless hours, with choppy directing choices that oscillate between realism and breaking the fourth wall (speaking into camera), the image periodically and inexplicably vignetting - every member in the audience I was a part of shifting in their seats wondering when this dreadful hell will end.

If you’re in the mood for three solid hours of narcissism, check this one out.  But if you’d rather an earnest holiday film about family dysfunction that packs a punch, pick up The Family Stone on DVD instead.