Toronto Dispatch. 3.

Many of the films that most captured my affections at TIFF this year revolve around family, notably extended family reunited for a special occasion:– a holiday, a remembrance, a celebration. Four filmmakers in particular created rich tapestries of these familiar yet elusive collective organisms, examining how the past reverberates through the immediacy of the present, even when we think we fully understand that past.

The most mercurial and vibrant and cinematically exciting is Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale (Un Conte de Noël), which premiered at Cannes and makes its North American debut here. Directing with an even more restless energy than he showed in Kings and Queen, Desplechin sketches out a family tragedy, the untimely death of a first-born, that precedes the story by decades and then only overtly references it a few times, even as the shadow of that death hovers over the film: in the cancer that family matron Junon (Catherine Deneuve) has been diagnosed with, in the fragility of her teenage grandson Paul (Emile Berling), and in the odd sibling dynamics that have caused eldest daughter Elizabeth (Anne Consigny) to, in effect, legally separate herself from her brother Ivan (Mathieu Amalric, in a mesmerizingly manic-depressive performance).

"Henri is the disease," she tells us in one of the film's direct address monologues, but perhaps the disease is in the blood - the same disease that killed Joseph at age six, the same disease that will eventually kill her mother (even with a bone marrow transplant, which will only give her a few more years; they have the mathematical formula to prove it!), and maybe the same disease that haunts her own son, Paul. For whatever reasons, Paul seeks out his outcast Uncle Henri and invites him to the family Christmas he's been banished from for five years; this helps stir up quite a holiday nog, complete with a brutal little brawl and a bit of adultery that may come some way to smoothing over a few emotional rough patches.

Desplechin marks the passing days over the Christmas holiday, but the film itself roams back through flashbacks, detours through old secrets and plays with clues that don't always lead you to a solution. This is neither a farce of dysfunctional collisions nor a family drama where dredging up past sins and misunderstandings leads to teary reconciliations. It's about the messy space inhabited by loved ones who will never know or understand everything about each other (or, for that matter, themselves) and may never overcome their own (rational or irrational) impulses and emotional reflexes. Some mysteries are never solved and some revelations are never explained, and it's beautiful. Messy, yes, and sometimes a little oblique, but always pulsing with human life in all its irrationality.

Next the to the sprawling two-and-a-half hours of A Christmas Tale, Olivier Assayas's Summer Hours (L'heure d'ete) is like a miniature, a small film of small dramas in the scope of large lives. Mortality once again hangs over the story of a family estate and its art treasures. Family matriarch Helene (Edith Scob) has preserved the country home of her famous painter uncle as a tribute to him, complete with works by French masters on the walls and rare pieces of furniture and glassworks, and she drills into her eldest the list of valuables that need be accounted for and, if necessary, sold off when she dies. Frédéric (Charles Berling), who lives nearby in Paris, can't bear to see the home broken up and sold off, but with his sister (Juliette Binoche) thriving in New York and younger brother (Jérémie Renier) settling in China, the holiday family home no longer has the same meaning to any of them, let alone their children. The film moves from one decision to another and the arguments that inevitably ensue and it's not all that subtly engineered. Still, there's a generosity of understanding and a warmth of character to it all; this is a gentle look at the way the ties to the past lose their hold as one generation gives way to the next, and it closes with a pair of sequences that alone would recommend the film: one that takes you through the Musee D'Orsay, from the workshops through to the galleries, and a final scene that recalls Assayas's brilliant early feature Cold Water, but with the angry, rebellious destructiveness replaced by a warm communal celebration.

The death of an eldest son frames and almost defines Hirozaku Kore-eda's Still Walking as a family gathers to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the death of Junpei, who drowned saving a child swept off the nearby beach. There's plenty of blame and disappointment to go around. The father (Yoshio Harada), once the local doctor and still eager for the honorific title in forced retirement, had put all his hope in Junpei taking his practice. His youngest, Ryo (Hiroshi Abe), now 40, has "rebelled" by becoming an art restorer, and married a young widow with a child to boot. The daughter is a chatty diplomat; her husband dozes or goofs with their children during the family rituals. Mother is the unappreciated host, but even she can't hide her disappointment in a grandchild that doesn't honor her family blood. There are no confrontations here; they endure the slights and the weather the discomfort, like a necessary negotiation, and once in a while a genuine connection is made, outside of obligations and expectations, out from under the shadow of Junpei's death, when they can just be family. Kore-Eda is marvelous with these little moments, observing the reverberations of discomfort around the table at a family meal after a thoughtless remark or a bitter rebuke, sensing the polite distance the parents keep from Ryo's widowed wife, or simply watching the still life of a family at rest. And the film offers a quiet line that can tie all three films together: "Even when people die, they don't really go away."

In fact, that sentiment could extend to Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, which brings an extended family together for a happier occasion and stirs it up with the self-involved presence of younger sister Kym (Anne Hathaway, who is really quite good at being utterly disagreeable). On leave from rehab but not yet recovered or used to not being the center of attention, Kym constantly and blatantly grabs for the spotlight - you can almost hear the grinding of teeth when she turns a toast into a comic monologue on her twelve-step disasters - and a slew of unresolved issues are churned up, which isn't quite the wedding gift that sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) was hoping for. The script by Jenny Lumet hits the expected conflicts and collisions right about where you expect them to show up, but Demme goes for the handheld InDigEnt look here, a first for the director, and the way he lets the digital camera roam through long takes and big ensemble scenes lends it all an authenticity. What he brings to the film is an inclusiveness, a sense of community and relationships that define characters we may only meet once. An extended wedding party dinner, full of speeches and elaborate toasts, could have felt unending; Demme makes it feel like family in the best ways, with a generosity of spirit flowing from friends and relatives. And while it's no surprise that Demme would have great music for his film, it's all part of the same community: every piece of music arises from the guests (among them Robyn Hitchcock) and radiates out to create an atmosphere of joy and celebration, always on the verge of being yanked away by Kym's next outburst.

Posted by dwhudson at September 10, 2008 1:31 AM