If Christmas movies make you feel blue, Winter Break is for you

Lena HaqueDecember 3, 2024

At Barton boys' boarding school, it's Christmas vacation day. While all the students are preparing to leave to join their families, a handful of them are forced to spend the holidays at high school, due to the unavailability of their parents. Under the supervision of their least favorite teacher, Mr. Hunham, an unfriendly and very old-school old boy, the teenagers willy-nilly try to take advantage of the situation.

From the start, WINTER BREAK assumes its desire to show us the other side of the Christmas scene, and what happens when we have nowhere to go, no family to welcome us, and no beautifully decorated tree . By bringing together on screen a range of convincing anti-heroes (a lonely teacher, young boys who are not very resourceful or who have had a difficult school career, a bereaved nurse), Alexander Payne's film depicts a reality that we don't see not often on screen during this period, without ever falling into pathos or complacency.

However, if WINTER BREAK does not have the good feeling of Christmas comedies, it remains imbued with a certain sweetness, full of nostalgia for the 1970s during which the action takes place. Outside, the snow is falling in large flakes, and inside, we smoke pipes in a library, wondering what the future has in store for us. This balance between heartbreak and charm was very important to Alexander Payne, the director, a specialist in mid-tone dramatic comedies.

“There is a word in Greek, 'harmolipi', which means happiness and sadness together, mixed,” he explained about the atmosphere of his film. “I try to maintain a comic atmosphere in my films, even when the subject is dramatic, and to remain agile, charming. Life is like that, right? It's a bit of a cutesy image, but life is not a set of notes, it's a chorus. With minor notes and major notes. Harmolipi, bittersweet”.

WINTER BREAK therefore does not offer spectators reconciliations full of emotion or epiphanies about love, but rather an alternative vision of what family can be, the one that we choose (more or less) and which, sometimes, suits us better than the one we are born into. His heroes, all orphans – of parents, spouses, children, are profoundly alone at the start, but willy-nilly manage to understand and support each other.

Carried by the very fine performances of Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph (rewarded here with the Oscar for best supporting actress) and Dominic Sessa, the film reminds us that, even in the worst conditions, the holidays of end of year are what we make of them, and that everyone can find a little joy in their own way. And it feels good.

Winter Breakto be found on Canal+ or in replay on myCanal.