Joyeux Noël

This imperfect but moving film is a nominee for best foreign film | Andrew Coffin

Of all the films made around the world each year, only five are nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. Yet American audiences have a hard time finding even those five—supposedly the best that world cinema has to offer—at the local theater.

The imperfect but moving Joyeux Noël (Merry Christmas), from France, is a 2006 nominee now making its way into wider release. Despite one undermining flaw the film is worth a trip to the theater (note: there is some brief nudity), even if that means trekking to an artsy—as in, dingy—theater in one of the seedier parts of town.

The movie is set on Christmas Eve, 1914. The Great War, World War I, had been raging for five months, and would continue for another four years. But, according to many firsthand accounts, a remarkable, uneasy, informal truce occurred in several places along the Western Front that cold winter's night.