Family traditions are challenged by new attitudes in this restrained, exquisite film from Olivier Assayas: a filmmaker whose cinema covers a diverse range of genres and milieus, collectively transforming modern anxieties into engrossing drama. With the late Edith Scob, and a blonde-haired Binoche!

Arnaud Desplechin’s whirlwind dramedy doesn’t fully reject Christmas joy, but it does give the undersung holiday traditions of dysfunction and discomfort their time in the spotlight. Starring a formidable French cast, this festive film’s thorny exterior makes way for little glimmers of tender hope.