A Christmas Tale (2009) The merry old home-for-the-holidays formula gets a somber French twist in the downbeat import A Christmas Tale . Catherine Deneuve, radiant as ever, plays the…
Movie on DVD Review

A Christmas Tale (2009)

Reviewed by | Dec 02, 2009
A Christmas Tale | A CHRISTMAS TALE Anne Consigny, Hippolyte Girardot and Catherine Deneuve celebrate the holidays
Image credit: Jean-Claude Lother/IFC
A CHRISTMAS TALE Anne Consigny, Hippolyte Girardot and Catherine Deneuve celebrate the holidays
EW's GRADE
B+

Details Release Date: Dec 01, 2009; DVD Release Date: Dec 01, 2009; Movie Rated: Unrated; Genre: Drama; With: Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Roussillon; Distributor: IFC Films

The merry old home-for-the-holidays formula gets a somber French twist in the downbeat import A Christmas Tale. Catherine Deneuve, radiant as ever, plays the dying matriarch of a dysfunctional family who needs a bone-marrow transplant from one of her three messed-up children. It's hard to tell what's worse, though: her blood or her bloodline. The EXTRAS on this two-disc edition include a great 2007 doc about director Arnaud Desplechin's own clan and a terrific making-of in English. B+.

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Originally posted Dec 02, 2009 Published in issue #1079-1080 Dec 11, 2009 Order article reprints