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MERRY CHRISTMAS (JOYEUX NOËL) A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2006 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
Even if it is inspired by an amazing true story, MERRY CHRISTMAS (JOYEUX NOËL) is at best so-so. This highly manipulative, anti-war drama by director Christian Carion hangs most of the reason for its success on the outline of the true story on which it is based. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 1914, the Scots, the French and the Germans in one small area of the World War I battlefield put down their weapons and declared their own, temporary truce. In this Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year from France, we watch the soldiers sing together, pray together and play together with games ranging from cards to soccer. How much of the story is true isn't clear, but some parts are obviously concocted.
Slow and schmaltzy, the film features a lot of badly lip-synched songs by Diane Kruger and Benno Fürmann, who play a pair of Berlin opera singers who find themselves in the trenches on Christmas Eve. You may remember -- or you may be trying to forget -- Kruger from her part as the "face that launched a thousand ships" in TROY. Her beauty continues to be as stunning as her acting is awful.
Kruger's acting this time, however, isn't much blander than that of her fellow actors, who all phone in their performances as they create a host of one-dimensional characters.
The film's low point comes in a sermon by a bishop played with all of his sinister powers by Ian Richardson. Admonishing the men to take up the sword of Christ, the bishop is so stridently militant that one of the chaplains present immediately renounces his God by throwing his own cross on the ground. Gag.
MERRY CHRISTMAS (JOYEUX NOËL) runs a long 1:55. The film is in French and German with English subtitles and in English. It is rated PG-13 for "war violence and a brief scene of sexuality/nudity" and would be acceptable for teenagers.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, March 10, 2006. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the Camera Cinemas.
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