Christmas, Again movie review (2015)

Noel has interactions with various customers: an impatient guy with a Bluetooth who takes pictures of various trees to text to his wife ("Hold the tree straight," Bluetooth guy commands), a seemingly flirtatious woman who admires the holly Noel put in the wreaths, a woman who asks "Do you have the Obama tree from Ohio?", and an intense guy who asks, "Do women like Douglas fir or Balsam fir better?" Some of the interactions have more reverb than others, but they remain isolated incidents with their own internal tensions and a strong cumulative effect. One night, a guy comes up behind him and punches him in the head with no warning. Later Noel admits, "I been punched before" and you believe it.

Kentucker Audley is a naturally charismatic actor. In "Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck," Courtney Love observes that her husband "had no idea he was as good-looking as Brad Pitt," and you get the sense that Noel is the same way. His handsome face flickers with emotions, gone in a flash. When he does show humor, it is only in his eyes, but it's there, a slight wince accompanying. Audley draws you in in the way the old movie stars used to do: his emotions are clear and mysterious at the same time. Loneliness does not express itself in language. Loneliness is the air Noel breathes. It's in his posture.

There are glimpses of unexplained strangeness: In the trailer, Noel listens to what seems to be a tape of an old-timey melodramatic radio show. He keeps pills (for anxiety? pain? sleep?) in different windows of a cheap Advent calendar, popping one a day. When Lydia (Hannah Gross), a drunk girl he helps one freezing night after finding her passed out on a bench in the park, with only one shoe, and gum tangled in her hair, shows up the next day with a pumpkin pie she baked to thank him, he's not sure how to react. A more conventional film would have had Lydia be the quirky girl who helps Noel find joy in the Christmas season. "Christmas, Again" resists. Lydia moves out of the film. She returns, and leaves again. The two try to play cards. She tries to talk to him. He is kind but remote. Silence dominates but it's full, not empty.