Mathieu Amalric (standing) and Catherine Deneuve star in Arnaud Desplechin's Un Conte de Noel (A Christmas Tale). (Jean-Claude Lother/Why Not Productions)

Viewers might want to take a deep breath before watching Arnaud Desplechin’s sprawling, vibrant family drama Un Conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale). In the film’s whirlwind first few minutes, a lot of ground is covered — there’s a funeral, a family feud over a ne’er-do-well’s debts and enough characters to populate a War and Peace sequel.

For a movie that begins in a cemetery and is, in many ways, a 2½-hour rumination on failure and death, Un Conte de Noël is never less than life-affirming.

This audacious opening — presented in a nimble, wildly inventive flurry of flashbacks, intertitles and voiceovers — relays the history of the highly dysfunctional Vuillard family. In one particularly gorgeous sequence, the most tragic part of the clan’s backstory is re-enacted by paper puppets, whose silhouettes move across a series of elaborate backdrops. The film’s throw-caution-to-the-wind visuals will be familiar to those who’ve seen Desplechin’s note-perfect 2004 film, Rois et reine (Kings and Queen). Un Conte de Noël is a more unruly movie than that gem, and it takes a while for it to settle into a comfortable groove.

The first of many plot lines emerges when the Vuillard family matriarch, Junon (a majestic and feisty Catherine Deneuve), is diagnosed with the same rare form of bone cancer that claimed the life of her son Joseph decades before. One of Junon’s only shots at survival is to find a compatible family member to donate bone marrow. In short order, her children, Elizabeth, Henri and Ivan, are summoned to the family manor in Roubaix for blood tests and Christmas dinner.

If this sounds a little heavy, and very French, don’t despair. During a Q&A for Un Conte de Noël at this year’s Toronto film festival, Desplechin confessed that he’s a huge fan of Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). Those same tonal shifts from melancholy to neurotic humour are on display here, especially in the moments when Junon’s adult children, still nursing insecurities and petty grudges from childhood, come home to roost.

Un Conte de Noël really takes flight when the black sheep of the family, Henri (Mathieu Amalric), appears after being “banished” for years by his closed-off playwright sister, Elizabeth (Anne Consigny). A thunderstorm announces the confrontational Henri’s arrival. Soon enough, fireworks — not to mention wine glasses and punches — start to fly, as the Vuillards attempt to figure out why they can’t move on from ancient events, wounds and ghosts.

Un Conte de Noel has enough characters to populate a sequel to War and Peace. (Jean-Claude Lother/Why Not Productions)

For a movie that begins in a cemetery and is, in many ways, a 2½-hour rumination on failure and death, Un Conte de Noël is never less than life-affirming. Among the film’s many themes is the notion that life is a game that’s over far too quickly to be taken seriously; it is the for the characters to decide whether they are going to play or not.

Though it’s unfair to single out just one of Desplechin’s spirited band of actors, it is worth the price of admission to see the manic turn by frequent collaborator Mathieu Amalric, who is currently on multiplex screens as James Bond’s nemesis in Quantum of Solace. Early on in Un Conte de Noël, Amalric does a drunken shuffle down a Paris street. All beady eyes and wiry, Ratso Rizzo build, he guzzles pills from an open bottle, mutters a bile-filled rant about burning orifices and finally does a nosedive right into the asphalt. This unhinged performance is a shot of adrenaline, and Amalric’s infectious, playful energy is a delight to behold.

He is matched, step for step, by his tireless director, who seems determined to throw every cinematic trick at the screen: irises, split screens, monologues delivered straight to the camera and extreme close-ups of his characters’ faces. Some of Desplechin’s experiments fall a bit flat. This film is too busy by half, and when viewers aren’t hankering for a family tree to keep things straight, they might be dozing off in an underwhelming subplot involving Ivan’s wife and cousin.

But Desplechin’s joy in filmmaking is palpable in every frame, and Un Conte de Noël feels like a rare and special treat. In a movie chock full of pop culture, it’s fitting that there is more than one reference to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Un Conte de Noël is as gentle and light as fairy dust, and just as bewitching.

Un Conte de Noël opens in Toronto on Nov. 28.

Lee Ferguson writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.