Like any Christmas film worth the time it took to wrap, Tyler Taormina’s wry but melancholy “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” has a bone-deep understanding of why all the best holidays are so painfully bittersweet: They bring the evanescence of our lives into focus, crystallizing the passage of time, while slowing it down just enough for us to appreciate how much of it has already melted into memory. Unlike the rest of its way too crowded genre, Taormina’s contribution has precious little interest in doing anything else.
And god bless this movie for that, because its tinselly charm depends on conjuring a feeling so pure and hyper-specific that even the slightest flurry of a plot might threaten to dilute the effect. Even more so than Taormina’s previous features (“Ham on Rye” and “Happer’s Comet,” which also flirted with the surreal as part of an outside bid to achieve complete sincerity), “Christmas in Miller’s Point” is just happy to be an immaculately conceived vibe.
Instead of scenes, there are fleeting glimpses. Instead of drama, there’s wonderful production design. Sure, Toarmina includes a few legible character arcs and a handful of moments that evoke a casual relationship between cause and effect, but such things are ultimately just scaffolding to keep his massive cast from flying into each other whenever this snow globe of a movie turns their world upside down. Imagine the first act of “Fanny and Alexander” if Ingmar Bergman had been raised as part of a sprawling Italian family in suburban Long Island and you’ll be on the right track.
Like Bergman, Taormina makes nuanced use of his nostalgia. The lived-in level of pointillistic detail here is extraordinary, which proves key to a movie that’s plotted like an advent calendar. The majority of the action takes place in the kind of house so full that it makes everyone inside feel hopelessly alone; it’s the house where the four Balsano siblings grew up together, and where one of them still lives with their widowed and aging mom (at least for the time being).
You can trace what’s happened between then and now by looking at the walls. The dissonance between the New York Islanders banner hanging in the basement and the Rangers-era Gretzky memorabilia hiding in the garage is enough to suggest that one of the sons moved to the city, the other resents him for leaving home, and both of them have used the house as a repository for their old junk. Every room is damp with memories, and gifted cinematographer Carson Lund shoots them all so expressively that you feel like they might come to life before your eyes if you squint at the right moment.
The grandkids play old video games in the basement, so as to enhance the movie’s atemporal timelessness (which is another way of saying that nobody owns an iPhone). A slow uncle sits at a player piano in the living room, while another brags about his job as a volunteer firefighter. The men smoke cigars outside, the women vibrate around the kitchen, and elderly Aunt Isabelle slumps asleep in her stairlift. Everyone is telling stories, and one of the adults is even writing one, though he’s too embarrassed to share his novel with anyone besides his favorite nephew.
Teenagers Emily and Michelle (newcomer Matilda Fleming and TikTok icon Francesca Scorsese) are hatching a plan to sneak out after dinner, oblivious to the furtive conversations their parents are having about whether or not they’ll have to sell the house. Christmas songs that aren’t quite Christmas songs fizz over the soundtrack, and the holiday decorations twinkle in every direction like starlight, but all the forced merriment in the world couldn’t diffuse the feeling of wistfulness that settles over the house like a wreath; even the family dog is full of longing as it stares through the window at a deer running free in the yard outside. The mood is as warm and tense as a hug with someone you’ve always known but may never see again, every moment at once both fleeting and forever.
That effect is so palpable and instant that the movie is hardly two minutes old by the time it starts to feel like Taormina is belaboring the point, though it would be more accurate to say that such overindulgence is the point. “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” opens by dedicating itself “to the lost,” and hoping they might “find their way home on Christmas Eve,” and the film that follows is happy to act as a north star of sorts, guiding the audience back to the warmest hallows of their own memories, even if they aren’t Christian.
To that point, the magic here is secular enough but strictly American — anyone who grew up within spitting distance of the LIRR or Metro-North Railroad is sure to feel like they’ve been spirited back home, or at least to the local diner where all of the kids used to congregate after they survived their family obligations (and probably still do). Taormina can’t help but recrete that part of the night as well, as his mosaic strains to make room for the diner’s freegan-hating cook, Michelle’s mischievous crush (“Eighth Grade” star Elsie Fisher), and a pair of nearly silent cops who feel like they’ve wandered straight out of an Aki Kaurismäki film (Gregg Turkington and Michael Cera). Steven Spielberg’s son Sawyer even drops by to play a burnout who’s supposedly named “Splint,” though I don’t think anyone calls him that during the 25 seconds that he’s on screen.
Few of these details make a strong impression on their own, but all add their own little shimmer to Taormina’s kaleidoscopic reverie, and even the tedious ones help to recenter the fact that nothing lasts. That’s why we have traditions. And for a certain percentage of wistful Americans, this movie will likely become one of them.
Grade: B
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
