Christmess (2023)

The title is both a joke and a thesis statement. Christmess, Heath Davis' 2023 Australian film, takes the specific misery of the holiday season and uses it as a pressure cooker for one man's attempt at personal redemption. It is a small movie in the best sense: three characters, one halfway house in Campbelltown, western Sydney, and about ten days to prove that a person can change.

Chris Flint, played by Steve Le Marquand, is introduced leaving a rehabilitation clinic. He is a former film star reduced to working as a mall Santa Claus. The film gives him a sponsor named Nick, played by Darren Gilshenan, and a housemate named Joy, played by Hannah Joy of the Australian indie rock band Middle Kids. All three are in recovery. All three are trying to get through Christmas without relapsing. Then Chris bumps into his daughter Noelle, played by Nicole Pastor, estranged for twenty years.

Davis wrote the screenplay himself, and his instinct here is to resist the easy version of this story at almost every turn.

What Christmess Gets Right About Christmas Films

Most Christmas movies treat the holiday as warmth delivered by the yard. Christmess treats it as an intensifier. Christmas does not make Chris a better man; it makes the consequences of being a bad one harder to ignore. His daughter is named Noelle. He dresses as Santa. He works in a shopping center while his past catches up with him between shifts. Davis understood that Christmas iconography has a built-in cruelty for people whose lives have not met its requirements, and he uses that cruelty deliberately.

The screenplay is sharp without being cruel to its characters. Le Marquand plays Chris as a man who knows exactly how much damage he has done and cannot stop himself from hoping that is not the whole story. It is a performance full of specific physical detail: the way he carries himself in the Santa suit, the careful way he handles a glass of something non-alcoholic as though it might betray him. He was also the lead in Davis' two previous films, Broke (2016) and Book Week (2018), and their working relationship shows. Davis writes for this actor, and Le Marquand delivers.

Gilshenan as Nick is warm but not sentimental. He is the sponsor who has seen this before, and he plays it that way without condescension. He grounds every scene he is in without drawing attention to the grounding.

Hannah Joy's Screen Debut

The most publicized element of Christmess before release was Hannah Joy's involvement. The vocalist of Middle Kids, an ARIA Award-winning alternative rock band, had never acted in a feature film. She plays Joy, a young musician in recovery at the same halfway house as Chris. The character is sharp-tongued, gay, and not interested in performing warmth she does not feel.

Joy wrote three original songs for the film, performing them in character: "Empty Chair," "Deadbeat Dads," and "Boxing Day." She also performs a version of "O Holy Night" in the film, which is one of those scenes that works against the odds. "O Holy Night" in a Christmas movie is a trap, a shortcut to emotion. It lands here because Davis does not linger on it as a statement.

As an actor, Joy is raw in ways that work for the character. The performance has rough edges that fit the social realist mode Davis is working in.

Campbelltown as Setting

The choice of Campbelltown, a working-class suburb in Sydney's south-west, is not incidental. Davis shot the film on location there over three weeks, and the environment does significant work. This is not a Christmas film set in a picturesque European village or a comfortable suburban American home. The shopping center where Chris works as Santa is recognizable in the way specific Australian shopping centers are: a little worn, a little loud, decorated at considerable effort to suggest magic and achieving cheer instead.

The film premiered at the Austin Film Festival on 29 October 2023 and opened in Australian cinemas on 30 November 2023. Its first Australian screening was at the Campbelltown Arts Centre, a fitting detail for a film this committed to its location.

Where It Falls Short

Christmess runs into the problem that Davis' films have faced before: the emotional resolution arrives at a pace that tests patience. The film's social realist ambitions mean it refuses the quick fix, but the deliberateness occasionally tips into sluggishness. Some scenes in the second act repeat emotional beats that have already registered.

The score, used minimally, is the film's weakest technical element. It is functional but uninspired. Given how well Joy's original songs work, the contrast makes the conventional scoring noticeable.

Nicole Pastor, as Noelle, has limited screen time for the emotional weight she carries. Her frustration and eventual willingness to let her father try again feel earned, but the film does not give her enough space for the final reconciliation to land fully. The daughter's perspective is the film's softest point.

The Verdict on Christmess

Davis wanted to make a Christmas movie that depicted what the holiday actually looks like for people experiencing financial stress, anxiety, and addiction. He has done that. Christmess is not a comfortable film, and it does not pretend to be.

It is also genuinely funny in places, which matters. The humor is not separate from the misery; it comes from the same specificity that makes the drama work. A former film star in a budget Santa suit making amends to a daughter named Noelle is both absurd and sad, and the film holds both at once without forcing a resolution between them.

The IMDB score of 5.6 undersells it. This is a better film than that number suggests, made with precision on what was clearly a tight budget, featuring two veteran Australian actors doing some of their best screen work. The fact that it opened in limited release and mostly circulated through word of mouth is the only genuinely depressing thing about it.