Joyeux Noel - Palm Beach Post movie review

'Joyeux Noel' drowns in sentiment

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

The French film Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas) is based in historical fact, but that does not prevent it from being hokey beyond belief. It is not enough for a story to be true, it must also play out as true. By that measure, this holiday card of a movie — France's foreign language film Oscar nominee — fails to live up to any standard of dramatic credibility.

Sony Pictures Classics

'Joyeux Noël'

The verdict: A World War I holiday truce tale from France, all but drowned in sentiment.

Director: Christian Carion
Starring: Daniel Brühl, Diane Kruger, Benjamin Fürmann, Guillaume Canet, Gary Lewis, Dany Boon
Run time: 116 minutes
Release date: March 3, 2006
Rating: PG-13 for warfare and non-graphic sexuality.
Language: French, English and German, with subtitles
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The film opens with a series of youngsters — British, French and German — awkwardly reciting verses of hatred directed at their nationalistic enemies. Where did they acquire such belligerence and what would it take to cut through such well learned prejudice to peace?

Cut to the French battlefield at Christmas 1914, in the early days of World War I, with enemies in foxholes near each other. There a German opera singer conscripted into the army bursts into song, a robust Silent Night. He is soon joined by a Scottish bagpipe and, before long, soldiers from opposite sides have laid down their arms and walked out into no man's land on an unofficial, temporary truce. They share champagne, chocolates and other hoarded delicacies, swap photographs and addresses, making plans to reunite after the expected brief conflict. There is even a cat prowling about, claimed by the soldiers of different nations.

This is the way we want to believe war can be, even if the nightly news tells a less humane story. Certainly it is the image that France knows will sell overseas, just as it peddled a similar gooey film, The Chorus, at last year's Academy Awards. French cinema used to be some of the finest in the world, but lately it has been co-opted by the sensibilities of Hollywood.

Fortunately, Joyeux Noel ends with an ironic coda which almost wipes away the sugar coating of the rest of the film. But it is insufficient payback for a movie diabetics will want to carefully avoid.