Joyeux Noel

Starring Diane Kruger and Guillaume Canet. In English, French, and German with English subtitles. Rated PG. Now playing at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas

Perhaps because it was the conflict that came closest to causing my own personal nonexistence (one grandfather experienced the first poison-gas attack in modern history at the second Battle of Ypres, while the other was one of the 57,000 British casualties suffered on the first day of the Battle of the Somme), I tend to react more emotionally to First World War movies than I do to bloodbaths set in other epochs.

No experience is necessary, however, in order to respond to Christian Carion's Academy Award-nominated Joyeux Noíƒ «l. Although its artistry might not be up to the standard set by Jean Renoir in his 1937 antiwar masterpiece, La Grande Illusion, the pacifist sentiments are at least as strong-perhaps even stronger. From first frame to last, this heartfelt film doesn't hit a single false note.

Based on the famous, possibly apocryphal cease-fires that allegedly broke out spontaneously along the Western Front on Christmas Eve 1914, the film devotes roughly equal time to the French, Scottish, and German antagonists who were fighting for control of a ruined farmhouse on frozen, broken ground. As these three companies sit huddled in their icy trenches, their belligerence is gradually broken by the swell of music, an exchange greatly facilitated by the presence of a famous Danish diva (Diane Kruger) who defies authority in order to follow her equally talented husband (Benno Fíƒ ¼rmann) to his bullet-battered redoubt. Before long, bagpipes are harmonizing with harmonicas, Christmas carols are being sung in various languages, and a Latin Mass is said for all.

Needless to say, the generals take a dim view of such goings-on, and all the participants are punished in one way or another.

Although such a scenario opens the door to massive amounts of cliché and sentimentality, the writer-director of this piece skillfully avoids every possible pitfall, stoutly resisting the temptation to fall mushily in.

In a film full of nice touches, the best occur when a traumatized singer discovers he can now only sing when staring into the eyes of the woman he loves, and when a German lieutenant (Daniel Bríƒ ¼hl), whom we had previously thought a Prussian bully, displays an unexpected aspect of his personality.

Among the film's many cameos, Ian Richardson and Michel Serrault waltz through theirs with the greatest of grace.

And, hey, any film that can make a hardened Grinch such as myself shed a tear while listening to Christmas carols has got to have something going for it-something extraordinary.

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