Why Not Productions
From left, Anne Consigny, Hippolyte Girardot and Catherine Deneuve in Arnaud Desplechin's "A Christmas Tale."
CANNES, France -- With cool, rainy weather settling in here for the weekend, the disco just up the street from my apartment building ran out of customers early on Thursday night. After a final medley of "Let's Dance," "Love Rollercoaster" and "You Shook Me All Night Long," the place shut down just after midnight and sent its youthful stragglers off to the Tunisian kebab shops. Friday night ought to make for a livelier dance floor, but after three days and five competition films, this festival feels sober, even serious. We've seen several ambitious and worthwhile films, and a couple I think are outstanding, but general reactions have been mixed to everything, and there's no clear Palme d'Or frontrunner among the first few entries.
Friday morning saw the press premiere of "A Christmas Tale" (Un Conte de Noël"), the new film from "Kings and Queen" director Arnaud Desplechin, possibly the most celebrated of current French directors. Like so much of Desplechin's work, this combines a largely naturalistic story with a highly idiosyncratic approach. Characters address the camera directly, or narrate their letters before a photographer's backdrop. There's a puppet show, a children's play, bits of romantic fantasy and mock-noir montage -- depicting the abundant nightlife of Roubaix, the provincial city in northern France where the story takes place -- as well as quotations from Emerson, Nietzsche and Shakespeare and snippets from "Funny Face," "The Ten Commandments" and other films I didn't catch.