What a waste of my time!!!

Very well executed

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Two and a half hours of overlong, dragged-out, tedious misery and gloom from start to finish in a dysfunctional neurotic family where nearly everybody hates nearly everybody else and too many try to drown their sorrow in alcohol and tobacco.It is because of pseudo-intellectual artsy-fartsy films like this many say that life is too short for French films. There are many good French films; this is just not one of them.To add to the misery, the film has been shot in one of the most grey, boring, depressing and uninteresting parts of France, so there is no beautiful scenery to lift it up, and nothing else saves it from total gloom.Not one character is likable, and after thirty minutes, one no longer cares whatever happens to them.This is not a Christmas movie in the traditional sense. The gloom just happens to be set over the holiday period for the purpose of having the entire family together so their mutual rejection can be spelt out.If you don't like this after the first fifteen minutes, you can just as well stop it. It doesn't get any better.On the other hand, if you appreciate sad films where nothing really happens, except for each family member's psychological trauma interacting with the others', then you may well use this review to conclude that here is something for your taste.

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 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.

After matriarch Junon is diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness her family comes together at Christmas in the hopes of putting things right.I've explained that badly, which is fine since I doubt there is any way I can truly do justice to this wonderful film about families, how they make us crazy, how they help us along and how life kind of gets in the way. I loved the way that about a half hour into the film I knew I was going to have to watch this again because I was simply enjoying it so much. Never mind that the film has a great deal going on that I simply didn't catch (Thank you IFC in Theaters on Demand for making it possible to do so with out breaking the bank). This is a magical movie its worth the effort to see.I have to say I love that Catherine Deneuve, a babe if there ever was (and is one) is married to Jean-Paul Roussillon, a small squat almost troll like man. You watch the two together and there is such love and ease and magic between them that the pairing is utterly perfect. Their pairing makes absolute sense, more than most romantic pairing that the movies have ever shown us. Its brilliant, and its just a small element of a film that gets adults and families right. To be certain its idealized in many ways but the film still feels wonderfully real.Its just a great film from top to bottom, with a great script, a great look (and sound) and a cast that is as good as it gets.See this film, it's one of the better films of the years and I can't stop talking about it.