COMEDY
If you're like me and prefer your eggnog spiked—or at least light on the sugar—then A Christmas Tale is a tasty holiday treat. This acerbic French comic drama (with English subtitles) follows a dysfunctional extended family, presided over by a chilly matriarch (Deneuve, divine as ever), which has gathered for a long Noel weekend. Though its plot contains twists familiar from lesser home-for-the-holidays fare (a serious illness, squabbling, tippling and bed-hopping), what makes Tale so refreshingly bracing is that it doesn't provide tidy sentimental resolutions. The movie knows that life is messy but it also embraces the fact that, in the end, most of us manage to muddle through.
