That Christmas: No coal in this stocking!

That Christmas (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for mild rude humor

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

Christmas movies have become an explosive growth industry, usually with lamentable results; most have the cookie-cutter plot of a Harlequin romance novel, and the lingering impact of a snowflake on a slushy afternoon.

 

The extremely anxious Sam, foreground right, worried that she'll blow her lines in this
rather unusual school Christmas play, fails to notice that Danny — helplessly trapped
in a chickpea costume — worships the ground on which she walks.

I’ve not seen a truly memorable new Christmas movie since 2011’s Arthur Christmas ... until now.

Trust our British cousins to strike gold again.

 

Director Simon Otto’s animated charmer is adapted from three best-selling children’s books by author Richard Curtis and illustrator Rebecca Cobb: That Christmas, The Empty Stocking and Snow Day. Curtis also is well known as the writer and/or director of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually and Pirate Radio, among others.

 

He collaborated on this film adaptation with co-scripter Peter Souter, and the result is totally delightful ... and slyly subversive. Curtis also brought along several of his actor buddies, to voice these characters: icing on the cake.

 

As is typical of Curtis' stories, numerous character arcs intertwine and revolve around loneliness, dashed expectations, unrequited love and rebels with a cause.

 

The setting is the picturesque seaside village of Wellington-on-Sea, which — as related by Santa Claus (Brian Cox), looking back on past events — recently endured what is remembered as that Christmas, when a huge blizzard challenged the close-knit families and their children.

 

(Curtis based this community on a portion of East England’s Suffolk, where he lives.)

 

But all initially is boisterous and fun, a few days before that ill-fated holiday, thanks to energetic and progressively minded young Bernadette (India Brown), director of the annual school Christmas play. She’s determined to abandon stodgy Biblical tradition and shake things up with some gender equality and earth-friendly touches, in an original script called Three Wise Women.

 

Her cast includes identical twin girls Charlie (Sienna Sayer) and Sam (Zazie Hayhurst); the former is a bold, mischievous prankster who never cleans her half of their shared bedroom, the latter a forever worried over-thinker who is the “good girl” yin to her twin’s “bad” yang. 

 

Introverted newcomer Danny Williams (Jack Wisniewski) lives with his recently divorced single mother (Jodie Whittaker); he’s frequently left alone, because she accepts double work shifts in order to make ends meet. They “communicate” via her endless stream of Post-it notes (a cute touch, with a great third-act payoff).

 

Danny also is deeply in love with Sam, but can’t work up the courage to even talk to her.

 

“I’m shy, and she’s anxious,” he laments, early on. “It’s hopeless.”

Colette: A not entirely satisfying quest for identity

Colette (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for nudity and sexuality
By Derrick Bang

Dick Francis’ fans were astonished to discover, in late 1999, that all the novels by the former champion jockey-turned-thriller author had received “substantial input” from his wife, Mary.

When Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley) balks at her husband's demand that
she "ghost" another novel that he can publish under his own name, he locks her in the
study until she begins to produce.

Depending on opinion, said input ranged from research and editing to full-on ghost-writing. I favor the latter theory: Francis’ lone solo effort following Mary’s death on September 9, 2000 — 2006’s Under Orders — was substantially weaker than all that had come before. No surprise, then, that his final four books were collaborations with his son, Felix.

I’ve often thought about Mary Francis, working in absolute secrecy on 38 novels and a baker’s dozen of short stories, over a period of almost four decades. Did she regret being absent from the spotlight that so illuminated her famous husband? Was she amused to know the truth?

Such thoughts resonated anew while watching director/co-scripter Wash Westmoreland’s biographical depiction of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, the French novelist known solely by her last name. Her most popular novel, 1944’s Gigi, was made into a French film five years later, and transformed into a 1951 stage production starring newcomer Audrey Hepburn — chosen by Colette herself — and then, of course, the Academy Award-winning 1958 Hollywood musical with Leslie Caron.

But all that came much, much later. Westmoreland’s film — co-scripted by Richard Glatzer and Rebecca Lenkiewicz — focuses on the roughly two decades Colette was married to Henry Gauthier-Villars, during which time she produced her first four novels … all of which were published under her husband’s name.

And therein lies the tale.

Colette depicts the creation of the young author as her own entity and (more or less) emancipated woman, although it could be argued that Westmoreland is equally obsessed with her budding bisexuality. The film’s second half spends considerable time with enthusiastic bedroom coupling and Colette’s blossoming relationship with the scandalously “butch” Mathilde de Morny, Marquise de Belbeuf, affectionately known as “Missy.”

(In the press notes, Westmoreland waxes enthusiastically about his “progressive casting philosophy” of hiring trans actors for cisgender roles. Methinks his focus is a bit skewed.)

Even so, we never lose sight of the growing degree to which Colette wishes to control her own literary destiny, and free herself from the invisibility of uncredited authorship.

In this regard — actually, in all respects — the film’s strongest asset is the gifted starring performance by Keira Knightley. She smoothly navigates the transition from naïve country girl to an accomplished sophisticate wholly at ease among the snooty, avant-garde intellectuals with whom her husband socialized.