Klawans on Desplechin.

"'A film by Arnaud Desplechin': signature or brand?" asks Stuart Klawans in the Nation. "The question comes to mind because A Christmas Tale is less breakneck than Kings and Queen, less unforeseeable than Esther Kahn, less disputatious (I guess that's the word) than My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument. There's less risk-taking in it and more of an impression that a masterful filmmaker is permitting himself liberties - including the right to resolve the story perfunctorily, literally with a coin toss. (Talk about flippancy.) I excuse everything on the grounds that Desplechin is exercising a self-assurance he's earned."

Klawans approaches Desplechin from another angle in Nextbook, where he argues that he's "contemporary cinema's most Jewish non-Jewish director."

Updated through 11/8.

Earlier: Tom Hall's profile for indieWIRE and an everything-so-far-type collection of reviews of A Christmas Tale, which opens at the IFC Center on November 14, following the conclusion of the current series Every Minute, Four Ideas: The Films of Arnaud Desplechin.

Update: Hey, Michael Guillén's got an interview with Desplechin.

Update, 11/8: "[H]is films are giddy with cinema, brimming past the point you think they should reach for only to delight you with more, more possibilities and more actual delights, more concrete details to complete the picture," writes Ryland Walker Knight at the House Next Door. "Like Truffaut, whom he acknowledges as monumental and inspirational, Desplechin makes films that look simple at first but (pace Kent Jones) take on a protean charge, eager to move into something new, to grab hold of a moment, if briefly, before rushing forward."

Posted by dwhudson at November 7, 2008 8:26 AM