In New Zealand, Christmas falls during the onset of summer: in the far north, where Greg King's digital feature Christmas is set, it can reach a sweltering tropical humidity. It's hot and sticky which, depending on your mood and circumstances, may be either blissful or excruciating. The holiday itself is like that for many of us; if you've ever had a Yuletide break which felt more like a prison sentence than a reprieve, then this movie hits a chord which few others have ever managed to tap, and with expert precision and intensity at that.
Like a Kiwi Solondz, King's approach is to compassionately acknowledge the horror of being ordinary: the humiliation of being unable to change your face, your age, your past in a world where advertising and consumer market-research defines what makes a person good or successful. The shame of not being rich, famous, or supermodel-sexy is something even the most well-adjusted of us have pondered from time to time. King's gift is that he can summarise these feelings in simple single-person tableaux (the bathroom provides a fragile oasis of privacy where the depth of each character's inner conflicts are revealed wordlessly) and in direct, believable scenes of familial interaction, neither of which flinch where scenes in similar films might lose their nerve: each family member's pathetic attempt to hold on to their dignity, and the passive-aggressive means by which they do so, are immediately recognisable, and this makes the long, sustained takes unbearably tense, but also makes them appallingly funny and even strangely poignant. Especially when shot at a remove just gentle enough to afford the viewer both a vicarious intimacy with, and an objective overview of, all of the characters (the term "voyueristic" is not unwarranted).
It's a hard film to watch, but an even harder film not to admire once you've seen it through to the end. A bitterly funny, shockingly honest portrait of the individual hell that familial obligations demand we all endure from time-to-time - preferably in silence for fear of "ruining everybody's holiday".
