“It’s not about opening presents, it’s about opening your heart”tells of an airport employee in Norway, dressed as Santa Claus to cheer up the wait for children (and parents), in the Netflix series christmas storm.
“What are you going to order for this Christmas?”he repeats, and the answers of the boys and girls on his knees leave him dumbfounded: “Mobile phones and expensive designer clothes”. Then reflect: “Where has the true spirit of Christmas gone?”.
The same concern surrounds the holiday series that are released year after year (along with hundreds of movies, many of them forgettable). What Christmas series capture your deep sense of humanity and togetherness? Which current fictions manage to go beyond the consumerist, superficial and sentimental clichés of this sub-genre? Where was the Christmas of the series?
Because not everything revolves around food, excessive consumption, the most ostentatious gift or the couple to show off as a trophy on Christmas Eve. The theme of the Christmas series is to be more empathetic and generous one and the other: at the family and fraternal level, but also at the social level. And that explores the Norwegian series christmas stormpremiered December 16 on Netflix.
Not everything is “more of the same”
What does it offer different? As it relates, in turn, to the moral message proposed, for example, by classic Christmas films such as Is living beautiful?1946, or miracle on 34th streetthe following year?
In christmas stormthe fate of several travelers and airport staff in Oslo, Norway is at stake when a snowstorm forced the suspension of flights on 23 December of 2022.
The ensemble cast will have to lower their levels of arrogance, selfishness and frustration to interact and, perhaps, radically change their way of seeing the world. An airport without flights, an unexpected place of confinement, a dangerous exterior. The Christmas storm serves as a metaphor for the pandemic that you try to leave behind, but does not resort to the apocalyptic tone, but to that of dramatic comedy.
Without reinventing the genre, and even with certain stereotypical characters, this series -of six short episodes– intelligently combines the conflicts of its multiple characters, under the direction of Per-Olav Sørensen and the presence of the famous actress Ida Elise Broch: a diva of the Christmas series.
She and the director had already released the series on Netflix in 2019 Christmas at homeabout a single nurse who, pressured by the machismo in the air and by her family, she intended to find a boyfriend in twenty-five days to take to dinner on the 24th.
Looking for a Boyfriend: From Norway to Italy
On December 7, in fact, it was also premiered on Netflix the Italian remake: I hate Christmas.
In which Christmas at home worked with Norwegian acidity, snowy landscapes and ironic characters, in I hate Christmasdirected by Davide Mardegan and Clemente De Muro, religious and marriage conventions move to Venice not without suffocation for Giannathe protagonist, in her month-long rush to introduce a boyfriend on Christmas Eve.
The comic power of Pilar Fogliati how attractive nurse Gianna (who is still in mourning after her boyfriend left her three years ago) can’t help the constant pressure her character is under. And Italian humour, more than reflexive or sarcastic, works against itself. Maybe Christmas hates her.
“Who would want to date me as bitter and asshole as me?”asks this Venetian Cinderella, who will, of course, reconsider these affective pressures at the cost of upsetting her family, her friends and the men around her. Who will you choose for the 24th? Did it really matter? I hate Christmas leave at least good gags to laugh at those who misunderstand the meaning of this celebration.
The yapa, in another format
Another premiere brings a gripping and enduring story about Christmas: The student (“the pupils”), with screenplay and direction by the famous Italian Alice Rohwacher. It was launched on December 16 on the Disney + platform and is not really a series, but a medium-length film, but its storytelling power, in just 38 minutes, transcends gift windows and fleeting fictions.
Because no one will forget The student? The trigger for this Christmas story is simply a cake. And his characters -with Italian picaresque- are girls in a Catholic orphanage in the middle of the Second World War, strictly supervised by the Mother Superior.
It is not convenient to advance much so as not to dull the enjoyment of this Christmas tale that combines the tone of Charles Dickens and the rhetoric of classic Hollywood cinema (in Disney’s best tune). It was a proposal that the Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron he said to his colleague Alice Rohrwacher: briefly adapt a Christmas letter from 1971 of the Italian writer Elsa Morante.
The student blends dance, black humor and even innocence, so that the spectators go beyond the dogmas of faith and conformity, in search of the true spirit of the holidays, between solidarity and sincere austerity.
In the midst of the excess of Christmas romantic comedies, two years ago he gave some air to this sub-genre, and also to the pandemic, the series dash and lily, from Netflix. The eight episodes of her set in New York make it an accurate product about two characters who, archetypically, love and hate Christmas. It is she who will really change them.
The soundtrack, featuring modern and timeless classics (including Fairy tale in New Yorkfrom The Pogos), sets the tone for hopeful little brunette Lily (Midori Francesco) and the cynical Dash (austin abrams) met in wintry Manhattan through a game: write the comments in the same red notebook and let the other one pick it up.
The treasure hunt wasn’t just for that item, but to see past the windows filled with red and green decorations, the packages Lily couldn’t afford, and the affections Dash couldn’t reciprocate.
dash and lily it was based on a novel young adults written by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, in 2010. A fiction whose loving flexibility could dialogue with the eight episodes of smiley, a Spanish LGBT+ tone, released on December 7 on Netflix. And it happens on holidays.
High-prestige Christmas series are few, but those that abound are the thematic episodes within some of the best sitcoms, such as The office, friends, the Big Bang theory (all available at HBO Max).
One from Agatha to close out the year
And this is all in a detective tone with an aroma of mistletoe and cut pinethe series is available on the Flow platform Agatha Christie: Tragic Innocence (2018), directed by the British Sarah Phelps for the BBC.
At Christmas 1954, millionaire philanthropist Rachel Argyll is murdered and Jack Argyll, one of her five adopted children, is arrested, but proclaims his innocence. The protagonists of tragic innocenceBill Nighy and Anna Chancellor, work in a dark tone similar to Agatha Christie’s 1958 novel about a dysfunctional family.
There is perhaps nothing more appealing than finding out who might be murdered on Christmas Eve. To find out, then, there is the stream.
Source: Clarin
