French Exit

A surreal comedy-drama romp from director Azazel Jacobs.

I had the pleasure of seeing "French Exit" at its New York Film Festival premiere. I wasn't sure what to expect. I was familiar with the best-selling book on which it's based by author Patrick deWitt. I wasn't quite sure how the source material would translate to the big screen but by the end I was blown away. The cast is breathtaking. Pfeiffer gives one of the best performances of her career. You simply can't imagine anyone else playing Francis. Lucas Hedges is also a standout playing Francis' long-suffering son, Malcolm. Actress Valerie Mahaffey is also delightful playing the painfully awkward Mme. Reynard.

I really wish I could have watched it again - something I haven't been able to say about a film in a very long time.

This is an odd movie about quirky characters. If you like films with quirky characters and you love Paris, you'll probably like this movie. You also have to have an appreciation for the fantastical and whimsical. I thought the fantasy aspects made perfect sense with the plot. Pfeiffer gives an Oscar-worthy performance. At first you won't like her character, but she grows on you.

With the adjective "French" in the title French Exit, much more can be expected than someone just leaving a country. With existential echoes and philosophical attitude the French can have over a croissant, an audience can see where writer Patrick DeWitt and director Azazel Jacobs are going in this low-key drawing-room comedy.

The glamorous Michell Pfeiffer plays sixty-year-old former Manhattan socialite Frances, who encourages thoughts that go from the losses aging brings to the mortality ultimately reserved for all. She has lost her wealthy businessman husband, Franklin (voice of Tracy Letts), who returns with the help of randy seer Madeleine the Medium (Danielle Macdonald) in the form of a black cat (yes, the occult element is one of the lighter elements of a film, described as a comedy but really a darkly and quietly humorous melodrama). Call it a farce because it's French, but don't expect to laugh much.

As in the work of Wes Anderson and Woody Allen (check out the Midnight in Paris-type music), the comedic turns are due largely to eccentric characters who don't fit snugly with the overarching themes of love and friendship at the end of things. At French Exit's end, it is far more melancholy than funny.

Dutiful son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) accompanies her to a friend's flat in Paris (one of several friends to help her through her grief such as ditsy Madame Reynard, played by Valerie Mahaffey) never certain how to take his mother's sardonic wit, or maybe just amused while perhaps not knowing it is her time to exit. Whatever, Hedges plays him vulnerable and shy to the world and her (he can't bring himself to tell his mother he's engaged, for goodness's sake)

With echoes of Sartre and Camus, French Exit reminds the audience there is no exit from our common end. Gradually Frances is shedding her wealth, friends, and family and accumulating a retinue of characters who exist to remind her, it seems, of how inextricably we are tied to others until we are not.

I don't understand the reviews that trash this movie, primarily because the complaints seem to stem from the type of movie this is and disappointment that it isn't something else.

Slight, subtle, art house-type movies typically appeal to a certain kind of moviegoer so I'm confused why this movie would even be something a viewer expecting outright comedy, big plots or themes or action - some of the complaints about the film - would ever select to watch. This would never appeal to my spouse, who prefers superhero movies. I, on the other hand, personally like subtle movies about reflection of one's life and choices, and the damage or outcomes that can result from those choices...which is what I felt this movie was about.

Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges, as mother and son - as well as the rest of the supporting cast (especially Valerie Mahaffey as Madame Reynard) - were great. All around good performances with a sprinkling of humor; I didn't expect belly laughs. Michelle Pfeiffer as Frances was very effective as a woman coming to terms with the vanity, superficiality, and naïveté of her younger years and the mistakes made in her marriage, with her finances, and with her now-adult son. She presents as strong but aloof, keeping people at a distance as a means to protect herself - only to find enjoyment and a family of sorts with a full house of strangers who have assembled around her in her quest to find a cat presumed to carry the spirit of her dead husband.

For sure, not a lot goes on action-wise. Just Frances loosening up emotionally enough to come to terms with her current circumstances. Slight and bittersweet, but not horrible by any means.

This is a case of "see the movie because of Michelle Pfeiffer" because the story is whimsical and quirky and ultimately doesn't make much sense. However she gives an award worthy performance. My wife and I watched it at home on DVD from our public library.

Pfeiffer is really good as the 60s New York socialite who, as she says, "Planned to die right before the money ran out." Now the money has virtually run out and she is still very much alive and healthy.

So she sells everything and her lawyer friend delivers to her several stacks of cash. A good friend has a vacant apartment in Paris and offers it to her. (I found myself thinking "Why would someone have a vacant apartment in a nice area of Paris?") She and her young adult son and the cat take a ship there to hopefully settle into a new life.

As the movie moves along more and more quirky characters enter the picture. Including a young woman who can talk to the deceased. Then the family cat begins to talk to them, in her deceased husband's voice. She gives away stacks of money to strangers. (I found myself thinking her son might like to have the money.) It is never hinted at why the son still follows his mother around, even though he is engaged to a nice young lady. I suppose maybe sons of NY socialites maybe do that?

So was it a worthwhile watch? Just barely. We hoped for so much more in the way of interesting story, or interesting resolution but it never gels. The quirkiness quickly becaome more of a distraction than entertainment.