Christ­mas Eve in Miller’s Point – first-look review

The hol­i­days are a time for ten­der­ness, togeth­er­ness, and falling asleep on the sofa after your third round of mince pies and sweet sher­ry. Most Christ­mas films reflect the pres­sure cook­er atmos­phere of the peri­od, usu­al­ly with some sort of dis­as­ter inevitably caus­ing fes­tive fric­tion, but Tyler Taormi­na takes a slight­ly dif­fer­ent approach, as the mem­bers of a large Ital­ian-Amer­i­can fam­i­ly cram into their matriarch’s sub­ur­ban home for din­ner on Christ­mas Eve. Rather than fol­low­ing a tra­di­tion­al nar­ra­tive struc­ture, Taormina’s film is more obser­va­tion­al, focus­ing on snip­pets of con­ver­sa­tion and exquis­ite visu­al details over the course of the evening. While the younger mem­bers of the fam­i­ly plot to sneak out with their friends, the adults dis­cuss the mat­ter of their ail­ing moth­er, and whether or not it’s time to con­sid­er a nurs­ing home.

It’s tempt­ing to ascribe the term ​‘ciné­ma vérité’ to Taormina’s film, and there is absolute­ly a fly-on-the-wall qual­i­ty to the inti­mate cam­er­a­work and lack of any major dra­mat­ic thrust. But Car­son Lund’s vibrant cin­e­matog­ra­phy – util­is­ing coloured gels, light sources such as fairy lights and lamps and intri­cate close-ups of toy trains and plates piled high – gives Christ­mas at Miller’s Point a nos­tal­gic, dream-like qual­i­ty, at once authen­tic but as arti­fi­cial as a fake fir tree or snow in a can.

This arti­fi­cial­i­ty is the point, though – Taormina’s film reflects on the rit­u­als that devel­op with­in fam­i­ly, and the tire­some notion of tra­di­tion for tradition’s sake. Although the fam­i­ly attempts to slap on smiles and keep things all per­fect­ly pleas­ant, it’s only nat­ur­al that ten­sions rise to the sur­face, and there’s an under­cur­rent of melan­choly beneath the gaudy dec­o­ra­tions and loud 1960s pop music which plays on an almost con­stant loop.

As the evening’s fes­tiv­i­ties progress, the teenage cousins Michelle (Francesca Scors­ese) and Emi­ly (Matil­da Flem­ing) make a bid for free­dom, con­gre­gat­ing with their friends at a local bagel shop. It’s in the sec­ond half that the film los­es focus a lit­tle bit, as the expan­sion out of the fam­i­ly home brings a direct divide between the adults and the teenagers. Michael Cera and Gregg Turk­ing­ton have small roles as a pair of late-shift cops bored of their minds (and pos­si­bly har­bour­ing secret feel­ings for each oth­er) and Sawyer ​“son of Steven” Spiel­berg cameos as a local ston­er named Splint, but the most com­pelling scenes are between the adult mem­bers of the fam­i­ly, as it’s revealed this is their last Christ­mas in the fam­i­ly home. Oth­er small­er details come out in snip­pets and sound­bites – occa­sion­al­ly we come into a con­ver­sa­tion mid­way through – and in that man­ner, the film repli­cates the often dis­ori­ent­ing expe­ri­ence of spend­ing the hol­i­days with family.

The vibes-based approach that Taormi­na takes like­ly won’t land with every­one, and the film’s mean­der­ing rhythms take a lit­tle while to adjust to. But Christ­mas Eve at Miller’s Point is per­haps the clos­est a hol­i­day film has come to tru­ly cap­tur­ing the expe­ri­ence of com­ing togeth­er for the fes­tive sea­son – often there are no high the­atrics, just pet­ty squab­bles, hushed gos­sip, and more food than any­one knows what to do with. To this end, there’s a time­less­ness to the set­ting, which is real­is­ti­cal­ly some­where in the mid-00s (flip phones and Call of Duty give it away) but could be much ear­li­er judg­ing by the décor and vibrant, fuzzy film stock. It’s a film with an affec­tion for the past, but one that also acknowl­edges you can nev­er go back to how things were when you were younger – and that while every­thing about the hol­i­days seems per­fect­ly excit­ing and straight­for­ward as a kid, the old­er you get, the more the fault lines start to appear.