A Christmas Tale

Junon (Catherine Deneuve) and Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon) are the parents of three grown children: Elizabeth (Anne Consigny) is a melancholic playwright with a mathematician husband (Hippolyte Girardot) and a tortured teenage son, Paul (Emile Berling); Henri (Amalric) is the self-destructive black sheep, banished from family events by Elizabeth five years prior; youngest Ivan (Melvil Poupaud), the peacemaker, is married to the beautiful Sylvia (Chiara Mastroianni) and has two eccentric little boys; while a fourth – Joseph, the eldest – died from leukemia as a boy. When Junon is also diagnosed with leukemia, all are tested to see who can be a donor, and then the whole family – including lovesick cousin Simon (Laurent Capelluto) and Henri’s daft Jewish girlfriend, Faunia (Emmanuelle Devos) – returns home for a long Christmas weekend. All crowded again under the same roof, solidarity quickly – and hilariously – devolves into feuding, drunkenness and bed-hopping, as everyone struggles to make sense of the mysteries of family, life, and what lies ahead.