The Celebration

By RICHARD CORLISS

At a posh party to honor a Danish patriarch on his 60th birthday, the favored son rises to make a toast. His father, he says, sexually ravaged him and his twin sister, a recent suicide, when they were kids. This acerbic farce-melodrama, laureled at Cannes and by critics' groups, is directed in a fake-verite style that distracts a bit from the entertaining spectacle of the rich airing their bloody silk underwear in public. But it's still creepy fun to watch the upper class pretend a family isn't in tatters. When propriety meets outrage in a chateau, guess which one wins? Cognac, anyone?

--By Richard Corliss