Foreign Christmas movies

Some months back I mentioned the French film My Night at Maud's, which is set over the Christmas holidays and which, quite frankly, I hated. It's on early tomorrow (Dec. 23) morning at 4:15 AM, but having blogged about it already, I'm not doing another post on it. Instead, I've got another French film which has its climax in the Christmas season, but is not on the TCM schedule this Christmas: Sundays and Cybèle.

Hary Krüger plays Pierre, who as the movie opens is sitting at the commuter railway station in Ville d'Avray just west of Paris late one evening, seemingly waiting for somebody. Getting off one of the trains are a father and daughter. Dad is looking for directions to a Catholic boarding school. Dad is a widower and can't take care of the child properly, while grandma no longer wants to, so it's dump the kid off at a nuns' school. Pierre tries to make friends with the girl, and Dad is obviously quite put off by this. Pierre also follows the father and daughter to the gate of the school, where the nuns themselves are none too happy that this guy showed up so late.

We then learn that Pierre is unemployed, living on disability because of the experiences he suffered while fighting for the French in Indochina. A nurse named Madeleine took care of him, and this resulted in Pierre moving in with Madeleine after he was demobbed because he had amnesia and apparently no other family.

Pierre, remembering the little girl who was dropped off at the school, decides to go there one Sunday to inquire about her. The nuns think he's the father, since the real father doesn't show up like he said he would. So the nuns let the girl spend the Sunday with him, and the girl is quite happy to do so since she has no real friends at the school and nobody who visits her otherwise. Madeleine doesn't know about any of this.

However, some of Madeleine and Pierre's neighbors figure out what Pierre is doing on his Sundays, and they're worried for perfectly understandable reasons. A strange guy with a young girl who's not his daughter? What's not to worry about? So as Pierre is planning to celebrate Christmas at a gazebo in the local park with the little girl, the neighbors alert the police that something is going on with Pierre.

Sundays and Cybèle is the sort of movie that's close enough to arthouse that normally I shouldn't much like it. But while I didn't love it, I also certainly didn't dislike it the way that My Night at Maud's really put me off. There's at least an interesting premise here, although it's one that I don't know that it always works, in large part because I'd think somebody would have figured out what to do with Pierre by now. That, and I can't imagine the nuns just letting Pierre go out with the girl on Sunday without really knowing who he is. Certainly one of them remembered her being dropped off by somebody other than Pierre.

Of course, people who like more arthouse stuff will probably like Sundays and Cybèle even more, so watch and judge for yourself.