Racconto di Natale

Ah, Home for the Holidays and Extra Helpings of Family Dysfunction

Late in “A Christmas Tale” Abel Vuillard (Jean-Paul Roussillon), the mirthful, patient patriarch in Arnaud Desplechin's noisy, cloying and altogether marvelous new film, reads aloud from the opening pages of Nietzsche's “On the Genealogy of Morals.” His audience is his oldest child, Élizabeth (Anne Consigny), who has been complaining about the inexplicable sadness that perpetually afflicts her. (Early in the movie she offered the same complaint to her therapist.) As comfort and chastisement, Abel recites a long passage about the futility of our desire for self-knowledge and our alienation from our own experience. [...]

di A. O. Scott, articolo completo (5957 caratteri spazi inclusi) su The New York Times 14 Novembre 2008