Ooh! Nobody does bourgeois families with skeletons like the French. Think 'I Loved you so Long' meets 'Summer Hours', only with Catherine Deneuve as dying-of-cancer matriarch forced to truffle her troubled offspring for a bone-marrow donor. Vey entertaining, and at two and a half hours it did't seem long, although rambling through several subplots. I'd recommend a visit to the Cineworld cinema at Fulham Road.

Sheila

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Sorry, it's called 'A Christmas Tale', not 'A Christmas Story', as translated from 'Un Conte de Noel'. I can't put the accents in.

Daft time to bring a Christmas film out - there's an article about her in this Sunday's Culture. I hope it comes to the Arts!

Yes, it is a bit odd. Maybe they're relying on the after-glow. Anyway, it's good if you like that kind of thing - which I do.

Thanks for the tip about the article on Deneuve.I've just reminded my husband that we didn't get the Sunday paper. We've been out seeing 'The Wrestler' and the DLR was distracting us with replacement buses. He says he'll nip down to the garage - he likes the TV listings in the Culture.

That Arts cinema should do good business, in Cambridge. College film societies are worth checking out in case they let non-students in. Usually they are happy to fill the extra seats and the ticket cost is usually subsidised. Probably you know this already.

Sheila

Spare me from students! I'd rather see things in a proper cinema and when they come out. Don't fancy The Wrestler. What did you think? Still buzzing from Slumdog.

'The Wrestler' reminded me of 'This Sporting Life', another film about a washed-up rugby star with a messy personal life, with Richard Harris in the lead.

I liked the 'backstage' world that's presented here,- the tanning bed and hair-dyeing sessions reminded me of Depardieu playing the aging crooner in 'The Singer'. I can't believe the guys are quite so nice to one another, though. In fact, it's all a bit home-erotic, or do I mean misogynist? The women aren't exactly positive portrayals. I remember watching American wrestling on TV as a girl, thinking how staged it all was, and that aspect comes across pretty well in the short talks they have about their 'stunts'. Just hearing the bizarre names as the MD reads out the order of bouts in the dressing room brought it all back. 'Ram Jam Robinson vs The Ayaltollah' It was enertaining and suspenseful. Was he going to have another fatal heart-attack? Was Marisa Tomei going to give up her pole-dancing carrer for him? Was he safe near a bacon-slicer? The end was great, because totally unexpected.

Just read the 'Culture' in bed, and thought the Deneuve peice was slight. Why do they send these slaverers? Is that guy always like that? Maybe he was fed up with being given such a trivial detail. Talking to an aging star may seem demeaning.

The spread on the next page, about Richard Yates, really brought out the shallowness of the one before. It was so packed with info and interesting facts about the Revolutionary Road author, I'm tempted to one-click Amazon right away. I'll restrain myself until I've tried the Charing Cross library as I'll be up there today. I'll look on the catalogue, as there are several branches and there's a chance I'll find one of his books somewhere.

Sheila