An Unexpected Gift: Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point

I normally reserve November for recovering from the festive indulgences of decorating, overly sweet snacks, and seasonal cinema, but when I saw a brief theatrical run of Tyler Thomas Taormina’s newest film, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, I knew I had to break my fast. Since theatrically-released Christmas movies tend to be associated with big stars, big productions, and even bigger marketing pushes, to see the latest from indie darling Taormina, with its mostly-unknown ensemble cast and its on-location small-town Long Island setting, at the Alamo Drafthouse was an unexpected gift leading up to the holiday season. Those familiar with Taormina, either from his 2019 feature Ham on Rye or his pandemic-era dialogue-free release Happer’s Comet, will know him for his penchant for eclectic casting, pensive visual language, and offbeat comedic style that proves to be a winning combination for the genre of family holiday films. Those new to his work will find this to be an engaging, and worthwhile, entry into the filmmaking of Tyler Taormina.

The film takes place over the course of its eponymous celebration, following the Balsano family through what appears to be a typical Christmas Eve. Awkward relationships between relatives are rekindled, traditions are upheld and repeated with the same gusto as if it were the first time all over again, and tender family moments are spent with multiple generations under one roof. While the overall film avoids typical dramatic structure or an over-the-top “Christmas is in danger of being ruined” plot device, the tension of the film rests in the quiet turmoil revolving around the family’s deteriorating matriarch and homeowner Uncle Matthew (John Trischetti Jr.), one of the second-generation siblings, struggling to live with her. In the midst of arguments about who would be willing to change their lives to take care of Mom and what should be done with the house, Matthew reveals he already made arrangements to send her to a nursing home and sold the home they are celebrating in.

It is in this context that the film stands out in a sea of Christmas-season nostalgia-bombs. With a multitude of festive films that are programmed into people’s calendars annually, finding a new angle on “home for the holidays” is the key. Rather than a genre subversion or a coincidental December setting, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point dives deeper into the beauty and the malaise of the season than many films on the subjects are willing to.  

From the beginning of the film, Taormina’s strength in casting draws the audience in. With each new introduction, a classic trope of extended family drama and silliness gets introduced. The strength of the casting, being primarily non-marquee actors, shines in their cohesion as an ensemble. Despite the film choosing Emily (Matilda Fleming) and Kathleen (Maria Dizzia), a daughter-mother set within the massive family, to provide a narrative and thematic throughline to the chaos, their screen-time refuses to emotionally overshadow the siblings, parents, and in-laws that surround them, letting the movie create its magical moments with a wide variety of characters and stories throughout the movie. One-off jokes early in Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point find themselves transformed into small, beautiful moments later. 

Taormina guides the audience through this massive cast, grouping them together in different contexts to emphasize who their contemporaries are in the house, and allows the audience to easily track who these people are, what their problems are, and how these connections create the film’s distinct and beautiful melancholic ache.

Even after introducing dozens of characters into the Claus-strophobic Christmas setting, the film goes further and divides the film into two settings: the Balsano home and the town of Miller’s Point. Featuring notable names in the indie cinema community, like Michael Cera, Gregg Turkington, and Caveh Zahedi, the expansive world of the suburbs creates an interesting contrast to the Balsano’s home. Emily, escaping her subconsciously-condescending mother and the family, finds love and care from her true community: fellow teenage holiday runaways. Here, a different experience unique to the cinematic tradition of cozy-at-home Christmas films, but just as authentic, visualizes the ache mentioned above. Cops working the Christmas Eve beat in a small town where the worst thing that happens is a bagel robbery from the local diner’s dumpster, a 24/7 market worker giving ridiculous underage kids six-packs of beer, and a communal meeting of horny teens, trying to experience intimacy at whatever level they feel comfortable with, create a borderline absurd, yet sentimental feeling, outside of the confines of the family unit. 

With Emily’s escape, Taormina emphasizes her connection with her mother Kathleen, as both wrestle with the state that the holiday season has put them in. As Emily explores the outside world, and the possibility of a new tradition that better cares for her as a person, Kathleen stays home and mourns the reality that this Christmas, one that has been a constant in different phases throughout her life, will likely be the last. Other family members either join in this mourning or choose to ignore it for festive sake, but it’s Emily and Kathleen’s psychic connection during the second half of the film, visualized in unique and memorable choices by Taormina and his production team, that emphasizes the sad reality for the audience. A particularly memorable sequence features Emily looking up at the empty strip mall and seeing her mother looking down at her, with the film revealing that Kathleen is leering over a model of a Christmas-decorated small town. One explores the darkness in search of a new future while one looks at a model of the ideal that is collapsing around her.

An already-overwhelming holiday to witness visually, the team behind Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point finds the full spectrum of the holiday experience and artfully presents it on-screen, utilizing different mediums and special effects to accurately reflect the nostalgic look of the season. A scene where the family watches home movies, a must-have for any family-oriented Christmas film, uses actual old footage, rather than actor-recreated, to emphasize how far the family has come and how much things have changed, with folks having trouble recognizing who is who in the footage. While driving around the neighborhood, camera footage taken from their era-appropriate late-00s camera-phones lacks the smoothness of the rest of the film, artfully recreating memories of watching decorated homes pass by. A similar effect returns for the fire-truck parade, a seemingly silly event that the entire family gets worked up over but that translates to the audience experience as the filmmakers cut the scene with this footage and reaction shots of pure bliss from the entire neighborhood. Those rare moments of childlike wonder, presented beautifully on-screen.

Taormina’s Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point is refreshing in its deep study of the “home for the holidays” concept. To its final moments, as the film has found itself progressively more experimental and freer from the confines of narrative and dialogue, the filmmakers never let up for something more conventional or audience-friendly. Challenging the audience to examine the complexities that make their families and their strongest memories both beautiful and tragic, those open to a more complicated Christmas will find something magical in this movie. It might stand out on a list containing the timeless classics of the season, but maybe it’s not a film that belongs in the post-dinner Christmas-Eve-movie schedule. It belongs later in the night, when those young and old have gone to bed and you need some solitude during the Christmas season. An opportunity to escape into the chilly warmth of suburbia and find the love and care you’re looking for. 

If you enjoyed this article, please consider becoming a patron of Hyperreal Film Journal for as low as $3 a month!