White Reindeer

Suzanne is excited about Christmas. She loves the season--right after Thanksgiving she puts up the tree and starts knocking back the eggnog. And why shouldn't she be excited? Things are going great. She is happily married to a TV weatherman, and he just got a job in Hawaii. But then he gets murdered during a burglary.

There are lots of movies about Christmas, but White Reindeer is unlike any of them. It's certainly not a movie about Christmas "magic," and though a black comedy is it not an irreverent but still sentimental film, like Bad Santa or Scrooged. This film layers grief upon a time of year when we are supposed to feel happy, but many of us don't. Though Suzanne has a concrete reason to be sad, she still clings to the happiness of Christmas, even if it is slipping out of her grasp.

Suzanne is played by Anna Margaret Hollyman in a very good performance. She is completely authentic as she comes to grips with the tragedy. First she is told by a family friend that her husband had had an affair with a black stripper. For reasons that she doesn't understand, she meets with that stripper (her stripper name is Autumn, her real name is Fantasia). They bond, and she hangs out with Fantasia and her stripper friends, binging on cocaine.

She also binges on Internet shopping, first with clothing and then with Christmas decorations, including a festive toilet seat cover. She even attends a swing party at her neighbors, partaking in an orgy in the blankest way possible.

Hollyman's performance is never pathetic--we are always right there with her, even when she is arrested for trying to shoplift a home pregnancy test (her credit card is maxed out). When the model of the cashmere sweater she buys visits her and announces she is the Ghost of Christmas Present, we accept it as calmly as Suzanne does--why not?

White Reindeer, written and directed by Zach Clark, offers no answers, no epiphanies. It simply is, as Christmas simply is. It's just a day, and doesn't change lives or enrich them. White Reindeer just may be the most intelligent Christmas film ever.

My grade for White Reindeer: A-.