I so wanted to like this movie. All the ingredients were there for the cake to rise. The title, a nod to my favorite Beau Dommage song. The screenwriter, the sympathetic India Desjardins. Actors that I adore, from Guylaine Tremblay to Michel Barrette via Christine Beaulieu and Stéphane Rousseau.
Unfortunately, in the end, December 23 is nothing more than a marshmallow film, steeped in good feelings, built on a predictable scenario.
What a pity. It’s like, on Christmas Eve, I unwrap a big present to finally find a simple Hallmark card…
Hello cliches
This film is full of cliches: the single girl who dresses crookedly in baggy clothes throughout the film, but gets noticed by the man she secretly loves the moment she wears a nice dress and puts on makeup.
The mother of a family who cooks for 15 when she receives only three people. The father-in-law mononcle who is nostalgic for the good old days and who is attached to traditions. The businessman who talks loudly on the phone when doing business internationally. The two lesbians who have an animal in joint custody instead of having children.
Don’t throw any more, the yard is full. We’ve seen that 15,000 times already.
During the (very) intense promotional campaign for the film, we often heard the craftsmen repeat: “Finally a Quebec Christmas film!”. But why did we absolutely have to equip our cinematography with a gnangnan genre film?
December 23 prides itself on being a comedy. But I only laughed once, during a well-felt tirade by Guylaine Tremblay once morest the food caprices of the new generation.
The film’s script is anemic. How come the granting agencies and producers didn’t ask India Desjardins to rework its script to put a little more meat on the bone (of the turkey)?
I have film friends who have been asked to resubmit their screenplays over and over once more. Have we been lazier with December 23 because we thought that with Guylaine Tremblay and Michel Barrette on the bill, the public was going to rush to the theater anyway?
The film is very open to diversity (a lesbian couple, two interracial couples, an immigrant family). It ticks all the right boxes. But it’s also very moralizing…
The most awkward scene in the film takes place in an ambulance. The ugly reactionary mononcle hesitates to be treated by a veiled woman.
Misery! Is that really the image of Quebecers that you want to give us at Christmas?
A necessary reflection
At some point, we will have to seriously question the weakness of certain Quebec scenarios. As much as I loved drunken birds, Confessions, The cheaters (to name only a few recent films), as much as I regularly fall asleep watching the press in front of Quebec films with sloppy stories, predictable twists or characters without psychological depth.
We cannot, on the one hand, deplore the end of the Gala Québec Cinéma and, on the other hand, give the green light to films that do not fly high.
We can and we must be much more demanding with our cinema.