Jocelyn Forgues

(On TV, December 2022) I want to be kind to Noël en boîte. After all, it’s a rare Franco-Ontarian film, and as a temporarily exiled Franco-Ontarian myself I’d love to champion my own breed of underdogs. There’s only one problem, though: the film is an utter clunker. Taking its cues from Hallmark Christmas specials, it features a modestly successful actress being fired from her daytime soap and going back to her Northern Ontario hometown for a break… while being followed by an annoying (yet somehow bilingual) paparazzi. But those of us who thought the Hallmark Christmas formula was foolproof have something to learn from Noël en boîte because it can’t even deliver satisfaction from such a clichéd premise: the plot beats that take us from one act to another are completely botched and incomprehensible with our current understanding of human psychology and storytelling. Things happen for no reason in order to get to the next plot beat anticipated by the script, and even a considerable amount of indulgence can’t square the film’s plot with what it proposes along the way. No one will be surprised to find out that the clunkiness carries over to nearly every other area of the picture: the acting is functional at best, the set design and staging are hampered by a visibly low budget, and the dialogues are almost terrible. One crucial aspect of Franco-Ontarian life—the casual switching between French dialogue and specific English expressions—feels incredibly unnatural and further adds to the artificiality of the result. It brings me no joy to be so critical: writer-director Jocelyn Forgues means well; there are a few chuckles along the way; I can recognize my specific reality in bits and pieces of the result; and Noël en boîte is so obscure that there are very few reviews of it on the web. (I even had to submit a correction on IMDB to make sure the film title’s accents were properly recorded and displayed.)  But there’s no way around the blatant awkwardness of the result. If you’re curious about Franco-Ontarian films, the baseline remains 2011’s La Sacrée.