The Real Doctor Wong

The Ref (1994)
Directed by Ted Demme, Screenplay by Richard LaGravanese & Marie Weiss

The Ref represents Ted Demme's greatest work. It's a shame he died when he did, but we'll always have The Ref.

The first time I saw The Ref (way back in 1994) it was March, which was either really late or really early for a Christmas movie, but at the time I didn’t really think of it so much as a Christmas film as a heist comedy. At some point in the next few years, though, The Ref became a holiday tradition for me. It fell into the kind of familiar exercise in nostalgia that marks the most well-worn holiday staples, and it didn’t hurt that it began to remind me of the Christmas season in New England, which I found to be exceptionally idyllic in its scenery. And The Ref has the added benefit of being one of the few Christmas movies featuring a foul mouthed thief covered in piss. (Cat piss, to be specific.)

The great saving grace of The Ref is that it’s no less redemptive than any of the more earnest and serious holiday films and yet it manages to avoid the worst excesses of schmaltz. At its core, The Ref is about reconstructing broken family, but if you’d like to get theological about it, its also about restoring a sense of kindness and genuine faith to a culture that is much more concerned about status and wealth than the core values that are packaged in that palatable sampler we call “The Christmas Spirit.” Take the delightfully evil mother Rose Chasseur (Glynis Johns). She represents everything that has gone wrong with traditional conservative values. All she cares about is money and property and status. She doesn’t care that her son’s wife had an affair out of any sympathy for her son, but because it reflects poorly on her status, and presumably because it might affect his ability to meet the exorbitant interest rates she’s charging him on repaying a loan. When the burglar Gus (Denis Leary) tells the mother that he knows loan sharks more forgiving than her, it’s not just funny, it’s also a pointed social critique—one that seems even more to the point these days. The mother is a monster who holds nothing more dear than herself and the property she has accumulated. She is greed personified, with a smattering of pride thrown in.

And Rose Chasseur is in good company in the town of Old Baybrook, Connecticut which is populated by the biggest collection of assholes this side of Plano. You really have to feel for Lt. Huff (Raymond J. Barry) because if this town was being attacked by a great white shark in the summer he’d probably be tempted to cover the city council in chum and let the shark finish the job. As it stands, Lt. Huff is possibly the only person ever to be grateful for getting fired on Christmas Eve.

Meanwhile, the only real difference between Kevin Spacey’s role as Lloyd Chasseur and Lester Burnham from American Beauty is that fate rescues Lloyd from Lester’s miserable tragedy—and also Caroline (Judy Davis) is a more interesting wife than Annette Bening’s Carolyn Burham. Hmmm, Lloyd and Caroline, Lester and Carolyn? The parallels there are hard to escape so I’ll just let you ruminate on them on your own. Lloyd and Caroline are caught in the wreckage of their dreams and ambitions and now sleepwalking through their seemingly picturesque lives that are actually rotted at the core. (Watch the film dubbed in French for the full effect of that last sentence.)

The result of the burglar’s intervention into the Chasseur family’s discontented life is that it forces them to confront their discontents and by openly communicating them and dragging the worst of it out finding that their unhappiness was not nearly as grave or unresolvable as their inability to speak about it was making it. Which is not to say that a gun to the head is the best method of marriage counseling, but that in this case it certainly did the trick. Hell, it even forced Lloyd’s brother Gary (Adam LeFevre) to man up to his wife and to his mother (which helps reconcile him back to his wife). I should mention that Gary’s wife Connie is played by Christine Baranski, so it’s easy to understand why he should have been so overpowered in that relationship. At any rate, the real triumph of the Chasseur family is their willingness to thwart their community and the law by abetting the escape of a catpiss-drenched jewel thief who has presumably learned a couple of lessons about life, too. Or not. But at any rate, the Chasseur family has been saved in the strangest of ways—and what’s more Christmas-y than that?

I know the temptation is to dismiss this film (or any film) as entertainment, but the thing about film and literature and everything we might even vaguely think about is that it all has an impact on how we view the world. How we react to a film and what we take away from it shapes who we are--not always a lot, but always a little, even if it just reinforces who we are by not getting any reaction from us.

Now, I’m not saying that The Ref will make you a better person and I’m hoping it doesn’t turn anyone into a blackmailer or a catburglar, but it’s a funny movie with some poignant moments that won’t make you gag from too much earnestness. (I know there are people out there who can only deal with earnestness, but sometimes it’s nice to have something different, eh?)

And if all the high-minded talk doesn’t convince you that you should watch The Ref next Christmas, then maybe you’ll do it to support Huguenot awareness.
Or for J.K. Simmons as Siskel, the commandant of the military school where the Chasseur’s delinquent son has been stashed. It’s great to see Simmons anywhere and you just wish there was more of him here.
And the great B.D. Wong as Dr. Wong, the Chasseur’s real marriage counselor at the opening of the film.
And Robert Ridgely as the town bigshot Bob Burley who gets to stand there with a hint of an eye twitch and take the best set of lines in the whole movie.
Lt. Huff: I nailed your wife…Three times, Bob. She said you never went three times, Bob.
And jewel thief should have a lovable old drunk like Murray as a sidekick. And the progressively drunker Santa Claus is a staple.
Heck, even the kids are good performers in this film.

At any rate, The Ref is a film worth coming back to again, whether it’s during the holidays or in the middle of the summer. Just pour yourself some egg nog and prepare to laugh your ass off.

Special Features
I can report that the French Language Track delivers some real good laughs.