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Cannes 2022, en compétition.

An hysterical siblings drama between bourgeois you'll barely know.

If there weren't all of Desplechin's beloved borrowed names (Vuillard, Faunia, etc), the brother/sister broken relationship with no basis, the family calling themselves by their last names, fragmented narration, ideas drawn from the lives around him and his own and a few characters asides, one could wonder if Desplechin had written this. (edit: he did, but with someone else than his usual co-writer.)

Imagine his usual comedy-dramas where the comedy would be replaced with straight melo. The exaggeration is thrown at the audience from the very beginning with an incredible double accident scene to send the heroes' parents to the hospital (and death).

Just like this event (and later ones), the same intensity is to be found in the acting. Given his usual talent with actors, one can only imagine Cotillard's overdramatic turn (her character falling into foetus position at the sight of her brother, in the middle of an hospital corridor...) and Poupaud's awkward bursts are his doing. Why? To make their task even harder, their lines of dialogue are sometimes quite weird.

On the opposite of the spectrum, the secondary actors (Timsit, Farahani etc) are allowed to be fine in the rare appearances of their thin characters.

The question remains: what was the aim of Desplechin in making this variation on Un conte de Noël (and co.) so over-the-top?

Score: 4~5/10

Enjoyment: 3/5 (I doubt it was always intentionally funny.)

Too much, with some rare fine bits.