InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

sergepesic 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.

Hitchcoc I thought that this was a tight film, with fine performances. The fact that I couldn't stand any of the self-righteous jerks that permeate it didn't really distract from it. I learned a long time ago that films can have weak and even evil figures who are still really interesting. This family has done so much harm to its members that nothing is really going to repair it. The figure we care the most about has a death sentence She sets things in motion, but has no motivation other than that. The dysfunctional bunch clashes and bumps and sobs and carries on and the chips are still falling. The free spirit who has been thrown out of the family, basically, is the one who manages to eventually leave unscathed, but how he gets there is through his own general disinterest and insensitivity. Yet we do admire his spirit. The fact that it is Christmas does nothing other than force people together. See this if you don't mind feeling kind of bad afterward.

hasosch When the Vuillard family comes back from church, on Christmas eve's day, they suddenly realize that Simon the painter is missing. Father Vuillard suggests that his children go to search him, because he has an inclination to drink and gets easily into fights. Since Ivan's wife does not want to go, his former lover Elizabeth goes. Driven by a woman's infallible instinct, she finds Simon immediately in one of those rare bars that are open at that time in Paris, the owner and the guests being mainly Muslims for whom there is no reason to close up during the Christian holidays. And now there comes one of the most wonderful scenes between man and woman in the history of movies: He has already "piccolé" as the French say (is pretty intoxicated) when Elizabeth sits to him at the bar. Simon is just going to order another beer with "side-kick" (probably Wodka), and Elisabeth says first: Do you not think you had already enough for today? - He answers: This is none of your business. There she responds: Well, I am feeling in the same mood as you do and therefore drink the same as you drink. So, there are sitting until almost 4 o' clock in the morning in the little bar and are drinking beer and Wodka, having wonderful discussions because soon, they are on the same "level", and, on top of all, they are even going to get reconciled letting passing revue what went wrong in their common past, and we hear out of Simon's, and soon also out of Elisabeth's mouth some of the most astonishing confessions that they would probably never have been able to utter in any other environment (there is a joke in French between "s'enivrer" = getting drunk and "environment").In Douglas Sirk's "Written on the wind", there is a similar scene between Robert Stack and Lauren Bacall. Robert escapes a family ceremony and goes boozing in his favorite restaurant, Lauren follows him. But unlike the scene in Desplechin's movie, the confrontation between the two marks only the definite end in their mutual understanding. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, in a book-fragment on Sirk's work, wrote: "Robert starts again to drink. Now, it shows that Lauren Bacall has no solutions for her husband. Instead of going to booze together with him, instead of trying to understand some bits of his grief, she gets more and more pure and causes one more and more to throw up" (translated by the present author from: R.W. Fassbinder, Filme Befreien Den Kopf. Frankfurt am Main 1984, p. 16).Another wonderful example of women-power happens between Faunia (Emmanuelle Devos) and Henry (Mathieu Amalric) who plays her lover. Henry, being a drinker, lets himself provoke to analyze the miserable situation of their dysfunctional family in an extremely theatric way attacking directly the husband of one of his sisters who sits besides him. After he is knocked down by this husband and lies on the soil, Faunia seems to be amused by not startled at all about this situation. When he gets on his feet again he throws her his car-keys on the table and says that she has come in the wrong moment to meet his family and that he wants her to "scram". But she sets up one of her absolutely disarming smiles, shoots him with a short but highly intellectual comment and asks him if this would not be nice of him to bring her now a coffee. Henry's face looks like a tank was driven over it.Arnaud Desplechin's movies are as far away from everything that is produced by or imitated from Hollywood as they can be. They are symphonies of style where the rhythm seems to tell the different interwoven stories rather than they are connected by an inner succession. This film consists practically exclusively of a super-all-star cast of the most famous still living French actors. A true highlight.

winkiecat Tedium as only the French can do it. I checked my watch for the first time 7 minutes in, and with 143 minutes left, I also considered walking out. I won't even try to discuss the incoherence of the "plot" or the inability of the characters to be personable because at about 1 hour in, I realized none of this mattered. It was not merely self-indulgent or pretentious, it was a vacuum. A soul-sucking vacuum. This film has no saving grace, no enjoyable character, nothing funny, and nothing sad. It isn't smart enough to be drama and there's no moment that's in the slightest bit farcical. The most intriguing thing about this movie is how it has managed to get mostly glowing and positive reviews. I was tricked by those reviews, but you don't have to be, gentle reader. All I want for Christmas is my three hours back.