if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Today is Christmas Day, so it is the most apposite time to watch this French drama, rife with cancer, marrow transplant, siblings rivalry, unstable mentality, chronic depression, familial incest and distant mother-child relationship, very Christmasy! A follow-up of KINGS & QUEEN (2004, 6/10), French art house director Arnaud Desplechin concocts a fine potpourri of familial entanglements around the bourgeois Vuillard family, opens with a consequential animated preamble of the loss of their eldest son Joseph at the age of 6 due to a hereditary blood disease while no compatible marrow transplant is found in both parents, the daughter Elizabeth (Consigny) and the second son Henri (Amalric), who is conceived to offer a cure to his elder brother. But time goes on, a third son Ivan (Poupaud) is born, and now they are all grown-ups, then the matriarch Junon (Denueve) discovers that she suffers from the same disease, the only compatible donors are Henri and Elizabeth's son Paul (Berling), hence this Christmas, a family reunion is endowed with a more grave determinant, especially for the black sheep in the family Henri, after a 6-year banishment (due to an unspecified riff with Elizabeth), his return with his new Jewish girlfriend Faunia (Devos) will undoubtedly thrust the tension with Elizabeth's family and have an impact on Junon's final resolve to her impending treatment.Screen time is almost equally allotted to the all-star cast with their own stories intermingle in a short span of the time-line, although the main stream focuses on Henri and Junon's reconciliation, but it is not a beatific movie to bury the hatchet and embrace a pristine future, every family has its distinctive script written with plenitude of relatable interactions, notably, the mutual attraction between Ivan's wife Sylvia (played by Chiara Mastroianni, Denueve's real life daughter with Marcello Mastroianni) and Ivan's cousin Simon (Capelluto) clicks wonderfully in the latter part of the film, it is very French as well, for moralistic puritans and prudes, it is a sheer crevice in their convictions which will prompt harsh opprobrium. One trait of superfluity is the chunk of monologues, colloquies with staccato coherence, loose ends are all over the place, we can never decipher the real motivations and reasons behind certain behaviors which adhere to a particular terrain of mores; also the peephole shots introduces each chapter gives the film a stage structure and the occasional talk-to-the-camera shtick often comes out of nowhere, they may variegate the viewers' recipiency but are inconsistent in the plot development and engender some distractions hinder the appreciation. Amalric and Mastroianni are my pick among the ensemble, he is a true thespian with utter devotion while she bears her father's resemblance and an arresting existence whenever she is on screen. Devos is enjoyable as an unobtrusive intruder (reminds me to watch an Angela Basset film), Denueve is as distant as always, graceful but stereotyped, Poupaud is too damn good- looking for his shyness and benevolence and Consigny is perpetually frowned and distressed, enclosed in her own little world, one might feel too depressed to invest in her. In conclusion, it is not your average Christmas flick, but a less chic showpiece about kindred liaisons than Assayas' SUMMER HOURS (2008, 8/10).

Big, comfortable house in the provincial French town, white Christmas, family get-together. But, Vuillards are not an ordinary family. The iron willed mother is fighting cancer, but this is not a sentimental story. Bottled up emotions, seething resentments, unresolved issues. And it all explodes in three turbulent days. Cold mother, dotting father that keeps everything together, and four kids, ever present long gone Joseph(died of cancer as a child), Elizabeth( successful playwright, but deeply unhappy), Paul (the proverbial black sheep ,drinks too much to want to control himself), and the youngest Ivan, (handsome, but timid with the history of mental troubles). And there they go, with rituals, carols, Christmas movies, and rivers of booze, never really connecting. And in all of this lunacy there is an undertone of devotion and twisted loyalty. The ever so familiar story of families. The crippling inability to escape where it all started, the place that made us, the people who know us and can't be deceived. So, we come back drawn by the magnet of family bliss, only to be quickly reminded why we left in a first place. Smart, beautiful movie for patient movie lovers.

I can't remember the last time a movie was so boring that I walked out. The Weatherman and The Island were both so bad that I thought about it but I even stayed to the end in those. This movie was incomprehensible, not funny and just went on and on and on. Like some other commentators, I wondered if parts were just French humor that I didn't get or if the characters were serious. I finally just gave up and tried napping because I didn't want to disturb my husband if he was enjoying it but he noticed and let me know that it was OKAY if I wanted to leave and out the door we went. He would like to know how it ended...if Denevue lived or died etc...(I don't even care).

Started thinking about 20 minutes in, "when is it all going to come together with some semblance of cohesion and interest?" To me it never did, and was an overlong borefest throughout, with very short takes leading to other very short takes that never got my interest for any.Never saw any family act the harsh way toward each other that this one did, or talk to each other so carelessly without more mayhem being caused by it than this one did, or showed less love and care for each family member than this one did, even with the mother dying!Why was this kind of labored film supposed to be the right one to show at Christmas? Maybe Labor Day instead? I sure labored through it unwillingly, and it was sooooo long. And, I love French films! See Cache, For the Love of Others or Amelie instead for great French films, and not this piece of pretty junk.