Review: Christmas Eve in Miller's Point

As popular as they are, the problem with Hallmark Christmas movies and their imitators is that they can never quite capture the emotional weight of the holidays because they do everything they can to avoid the bittersweet. The tales of pitch perfectly decorated small towns and put-together singletons finding a second chance at love pass the time well enough, but, as Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point proves, the holiday is about much more than meet cutes. 

An ensemble film about a vigorous extended Italian-American family in a fictitious Northern town, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point has more in common with Richard Linklater’s sprawling ensemble films like Dazed and Confused and Slacker than the five or so Christmas classics that grace our televisions at the end of each year. Rather than ground the story entirely in one character’s perspective, Taormina takes an almost ethnographic approach as Christmas Eve unspools in the spacious but decisively middle-class home–a similar tack that also allowed his debut film, 2019’s Ham on Rye, to achieve a heightened yet realistic suburban reality. 

At this Christmas Eve gathering, the fiftysomething parents have hushed discussions of selling the place and moving grandmother into assisted living. The preteens dare each other to go into the basement and fetch a pet iguana while their elders get a little too excited about blanching the green beans. Though the film does eventually settle on rebellious teen Emily (Matilda Fleming) as she escapes the festivities for a John Hughes-ish night of her own, it always takes us back to the extended but gentle family drama. 

In its dedication to the essence of the holiday season, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point captures what defines family more than any American film in recent memory. For Taormina, the holiday is a collection of small but profound moments that endure and circle back from year to year. Like the rest of us, he knows the sheer ridiculousness of watching the same home movies yet again on VHS or standing out in the cold to take in a parade of volunteer firemen dressed as elves on emergency vehicles that are ensconced in Christmas lights. But that doesn’t make the festivities any less meaningful.

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point is now playing at AMC Thoroughbred 20 and Regal Hollywood 27.