Producers: Krista Minto, Tyler Taormina, David Croley Broyles, Duncan Sullivan, Michael Cera, Michael Davis, Kevin Anton, Eric Berger, David Entin and Rob Rice Director: Tyler Taormina Screenplay: Eric Berger and Tyler Taormina Cast: Matilda Fleming, Francesca Scorsese, Maria Dizzia, Michael Cera, Ben Shenkman, Elsie Fisher, Gregg Turkington, Lev Cameron, Tony Savino, Chris Lazzaro, Mary Reistetter, Justin Longo, John J. Trischetti Jr., Maria Carucci, Steve Alleva, Laura Robards, Grege Morris, Sawyer Spielberg, Leo Chan, Jordan Barringer, Brendan Burt, Austin Lago, JoJo Cincinnati, Leo Hervey, Ava Francesca Renne, Tyler Diamond, Billy Mcshane, Gregory Falatek, Laura Wernette, Caveh Zahedi, Liam Mijares, Jackson Mijares, Simone Mijares, Sean Carr, Brittany Hughes, Keon Mosley, Daniel Hudson, Delancey Shapiro, Pavel Banzaraktsaev, Joyitha Mandal, Travis Maffei and Derek Trendz Distributor: IFC Films
Grade: C+
Tyler Taormina’s film about a big family holiday celebration is pretty much a mess, but presumably that’s intentional. All the hustle and bustle, the variations in perspective, the shifts from house to town, and the tonal ambiguities aren’t accidental; they’re meant to create a tapestry of intergenerational domestic friction and joy. That’s a laudable ambition, but ultimately “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” set at the 2006 get-together of the boisterous Italian-American Balsano clan on Long Island, comes across as a hectic introduction to a bunch of folks you might find not only hard to keep track of, but sometimes more annoying than endearing.
The location of the annual festivities is the home of the Balsano matriarch, Antonia (Mary Reistetter), whose son Matt (John T. Trischetti, Jr.) and his wife Bev (Grege Morris) live with her. Matt’s siblings Kathleen (Maria Dizzia), Elyse (Maria Carucci) and Ray (Tony Savino) come with their families for the evening, along with plenty of other relatives and friends.
At first it appears that Kathleen, her husband Lenny (Ben Shenkman) and their two kids, teen Emily (Matilda Fleming) and her young brother Andrew (Justin Longo) will be the center of Taormina’s attention; the film opens with them driving to the house, glimpsed along the way by two oddball cops, Sergeant Brooks (Gregg Turkington) and Officer Gibson (Michael Cera), who will periodically pop up as observers of and reactors to the chaotic goings-on. But though they get their moments in the spotlight—the hostility Emily feels toward her mother is a notable plot point, and the gradual softening of her adolescent angst is a last-act one, while Andrew is our special conduit to the magical sights of the night—this is first and foremost an ensemble piece, as the huge cast listing indicates.
If one wants to identify the salient threads at work, the generational divisions are probably the most useful modes of categorization. Matt and Bev bring up the fact that Antonia is failing physically and mentally, and suggest that the siblings should discuss whether it’s time to consider placing her in an assisted living facility and selling the house. Kathleen and Elyse react with surprise, but Ray is adamantly opposed to the idea.
Meanwhile the younger kids are pretty much spending time on their own, watching television, playing video games, and playing mild pranks, like an incident involving a missing iguana.
The older members of the young generation, however, are rebellious. Emily defies her mother and goes out on the town with her cousin Michelle (Francesca Scorsese), linking up with Sasha (Ava Francesca Renne) and Craig (Leo Hervey). They wind up at the bagel shop that serves as a teen hangout, where Craig expounds on the capitalism behind Christmas and the owner goes into a paroxysm about someone stealing stale bagels she’s consigned to the dumpster out back. There Michelle strikes up a connection with Lynn, a waitress (Elsie Fisher), while Emily converses with shy, likable Marty (Tyler Diamond).
But it would be a mistake to concentrate on these threads as dominant. Taormina’s emphasis is on individual moments of group nostalgia or insights either touching or amusing. The whole family gathers to watch home movies that bring recollections of times past, and go outside to watch a parade of elaborately decorated fire trucks that illuminate their faces. Among the firemen is Bruce (Chris Lazzaro), Elyse’s son, a troubled fellow who delivers a long, meandering toast that’s equal parts discernment and embarrassment; his father Ron (Steve Alleva), on the other hand, is an opinionated motormouth who also prides himself on his cooking. On the other hand Ray, a widower who comes across as a bullying blowhard, confesses to his nephew Ricky (Austin Lago) that he has artistic ambitions. Then there’s elderly Isabelle (JuJo Cincinnati); she delivers a moving eulogy to departed family members at the table loaded down with food, but is also the target of a joke when she’s found asleep in a stair lift, prompting a kid to press a button that sends her gliding down to the floor below.
It’s this mixture of nostalgia and present-day celebration, always clouded by the realization that given Antonia’s declining condition this could be the last in the family’s holiday tradition, that’s at the heart of the film. At the close, however, Taormina moves away from the family into the town to focus on a trio of slackers (Sawyer Spelberg, Billy Mcshane and Gregory Falatek) who hang out in the town cemetery, with Spielberg’s Splint meditating on the flux in human affairs, and on those two strangely deadpan policemen, who finally connect in an unexpected way. The point, one supposes, is to suggest the mystery always at work in the world, and the curious links that keep it running. But the close takes us out of the microcosm of the Balsano clan into a wider context, and, one could argue, dilutes the impact by expanding the canvas.
Certainly one has to admire the Altmanesque fashion in which Taormina arranges his tableaux, and the way in which his technical colleagues—production designer Paris Peterson, costumer Kimberly Odenthal and cinematographer Carson Lund—collaborate with him to create a luminous, multi-colored yet time-specific world hazy with affection and regret. Editor Kevin Anton deserves credit for imposing a semblance of order on what often veers toward random vignettes, as do music supervisors Ollie White and Tom Stanford, who supply a parade of needle drops that avoid the usual pop suspects in favor of peculiar but still appropriate choices. As to the performances, they vary from overbearing to restrained, and from spot-on to amateurish, but most of the actors manage to add a degree of richness to characters who are frankly pretty sketchy.
Alternately affecting and affected, this is a Christmas movie that has a lovely glow but in the end is a hit-and-miss proposition, sometimes insightful but sometimes just awkward. You’ probably leave it feeling rather like Eric (Brendan Burt), a newcomer to the festivities—fascinated but more than a little bewildered.