User reviews

Michelle Pfeiffer plays an eccentric and rather lost socialite whose money has run out, so she sells everything she has and moves, with her withdrawn son to Paris, ostensibly to die before her money, which she continues to spend apace, runs out.

There is a lot going on in this quirky, surreal dark comedy / drama - including an underlying mystery regarding the death of Pfeiffer's husband and his spirit's possible occupation of their cat and her son's on / off relationship with Imogen Poots. At the centre of all this and in large part the main reason for watching this is Pfeiffer giving a superb performance as the saddened but brutally effervescent Frances. There do seems to be things missing here and not all the supporting characters have sufficient heft but overall this is great pleasure with some deft comedy certainly some weird stuff and in the end great sweetness.

Michelle Pfeiffer plays an aging socialite who finds herself broke and needing to start over. With her son and cat in tow, they take off to stay at a friend's apartment in Paris to figure things out.

The cat plays a prominent role and takes the film into the absurd realm. I could have done without this subplot as it changes the tone of the film halfway through. If they were going for surreal and absurd go in 100% or don't go there at all. The story didn't need it.

Despite that, Pfeiffer's commitment to playing this affected, sarcastic woman keeps you interested. At times she is hilarious, then gradually the layers are pulled back, revealing the pain underneath the facade. Her scenes in the latter part of the film are emotional and moving.

The supporting cast was very good as well. Lucas Hedges, the seemingly go-to young actor in Hollywood, was appropriately deadpan and amusing. But it's Pfeiffer who deserves an Oscar nomination. It's truly one of her best roles.

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 love when you see a movie that you know absolutely nothing about and therefore you do not expect anything, because when you see it, everything is a surprise, not expectations, only opportunities. French Exit managed to come to me in many ways, aesthetically clean, with a costume design like cherry on the cake and throughout the movie I couldn't stop thinking about how beautiful Michelle Pfeiffer looked.

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.

No spoiler here, but the scene with the Parisian waiter would single-handedly redeem a much weaker movie. For this one it was the cherry on the sundae.

As watchable as she is, even Michelle Pfeiffer couldn't add any sparkle to this most tedious, pretentious script. Characters are under developed. There is only one drab mood from the moment the movie begins to its predictable (and most awaited) ending. There were no ups and down and it was as if the director had played one droning visual note throughout. You know it's an unbearable show when members in the audience start looking at the time halfway through. We saw three people check the time on their mobiles during the movie. Utterly boring. Avoid.

Admittedly, the story is pure nonsense posing as something more than that. This whole endeavour only works because all the other ingredients are good. Well, all except for Michelle Pfeiffer who is absolutely amazing. Definitely worth the watch.

Azazel Jacobs' new film centers around a wealthy Manhattan socialite, Frances (Michelle Pfeiffer) and her son Malcom (Lucas Hedges.) They both move to Paris together with their cat after the death of Frances' husband. The film's tone is deadpan and absurdist, and almost feels like an uneven and often unfulfilling amalgamation of Woody Allen and Luis Buñuel. But try as it might, the film sorely lacks the intellectual wit of Woody Allen or the intricately clever ambiguity of Buñuel's best films.

The first major problem with the film is that it lacks a clear plot. It contains several short set pieces with slightly-absurd, sarcastic dialogue that could have made for mildly amusing mini-short films (a throwback-style cruise ship en route to Paris, a séancé, cocktail gatherings.) Yet none of them really help hold up the story, much less create a narrative crux to keep viewers engaged. The two main characters are moderately well-developed, but their personalities never feel especially original or unique. Even though Frances has lost a loved one, the film doesn't really have an emotional core or sense of empathy towards its characters. Instead, there's a level of coldness and unreliability even within a darkly comedic context that recalls the polarizing tones of Yorgos Lanthimos' movies. The attempts at surreal humor aren't funny or even clever; as far as dark comedy goes, the film is neither funny enough to feel well-accomplished as an original comedy nor dark enough to feel shocking and tonally opaque. The cast does serviceably fine with the material they are given, but no one gets much of a range here in character. For a movie attempting to come off as sophisticated, it also doesn't leave much for viewers to really think about or interpret underneath its narrative surface either. The only aspects of the film that I can unequivocally commend are the cinematography of Paris as well as the simple yet playfully elegant score.

All in all, this strangely forgettable film (both literally and figuratively) neither has the creativity nor wit to shine as a quirky comedy. There are ingredients here and there that could pack more of a punch within the film if given the right context within a more well-composed story, but without such cleverness, the film feels undercooked as a whole. Not recommended. 4/10

A french exit is the term for when one leaves a party without saying goodbye. There's an implied disrespect when one does that; a sense of anger or boredom, and those feelings hang over much of the movie but are leavened with a sprinkling of good humour as if the departed guest had left behind some unexpected gifts.

At first glance, it seems to be an icy drama about emotionally closed off, super-wealthy New Yorkers but it turns out to be a stealthy comic/absurdist deranged tale where supernatural events are taken as normal, and mediums and private detectives can move into one's life.

The plot, such as it is, starts out with Michelle Pfeiffer's character learning that all her money has been spent. She sells off what she has left, and moves to Paris with her aimless son (played by Lucas Hedges) and their cat (I don't remember who plays the cat) to move into an apartment being lent to her by a friend.

What becomes clear is that Pfeiffer's character intends to live only as long as she still has money, and she is deliberately spending it as fast as she can.

This description doesn't do justice to the left turns the narrative takes, but I won't say more - just know that contacting the dead, mega generosity to the homeless, and a spurned fiancée all form part of the narrative.

It's a bizarre mix, and yet something about it works. Despite the iciness of Pfeiffer and the uselessness of Hedges, they attract into their lives a bizarre group of almost... friends? It's almost as if, in spite of themselves, a group of misfits become their family and unlikely emotional bonds form. It's as if humans, despite how they may have closed themselves off due to past pain, can't help forming tribes, communities who need each other.

It's as if we can put up barriers (like money) between us, but we can't keep them up - sooner or later we have to let people in, or we die...

If someone told me, they can't get too into the emotional problems of the super-wealthy, I would get that but I think there is something more universal at work here.

The screenplay is by Patrick DeWitt based on his own novel. (He also wrote the book "The Sisters Brothers" is based on.) It's directed by Azazel Jacobs. I have not seen any of Jacobs' previous work but he directs here with a sure sense of space, and a flair for the chilly atmosphere. It's not flashy but it really does the job.

Everyone is always saying there should be more less sequels/remakes/brand-extensions. This movie is weird, and that's good.

Hilarious and painful, yet heartwarming and relatable. Patrick deWitt's French Exit is visualized in a just-right quirky vibe and fashionable manner, I love it.

Ugh, if I have to sit through one more dreary movie. Maybe cinema IS dead after all.

It's like the writer and director of "French Exit" went about making their own respective movies without consulting each other at all. The writer thought he was making a zany dark comedy in the "Harold and Maude" vein, while the director slaps the comedy down at every turn and opts instead for a morose, joyless, and droning movie that doesn't even have the courtesy to make sense.

This is another in the long line of movies that gives us a character some other character wants to not be in love with but can't help being in love with, to the point that she flies all the way to Paris to reclaim him, despite the fact that the person she's in love with is lacking a single quality that would make anyone love him in the first place. Michelle Pfeiffer gives glimmers of a feisty performance, but she's undermined by the material, and her character doesn't have any arc. The film brings together a random assortment of characters who all inexplicably sleep over nightly at Pfeiffer's apartment, despite the fact that they all are adults and have homes of their own. I'm sure we're supposed to think this is quirky and adorable, but it's irritating as hell.

The only character I came close to wanting to spend time with was Valerie Mahaffey, as a daffy but endearing friend who's adopted by Pfeiffer and her blank slate of a son (Lucas Hedges). I don't know why she wanted to be around these people, and the movie never gives us a good reason either.

What a total failure.

Grade: D-

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.

I knew basically nothing about Azazel Jacobs's offbeat "French Exit" when I started watching it. That made it even more interesting. Michelle Pfeiffer plays a widowed socialite running out of money who moves to Paris with her son (Lucas Hedges) and their cat. A series of unexpected things follow.

This isn't the sort of movie that you can just sit back and watch. It requires you to pay attention to the characters' development and relations with each other, and how they often do questionable things. One could make the argument that only a rich person even has the means to do what Pfeiffer's character does; probably true.

In the end it's not a great movie, but worth seeing. Definitely more interesting than the umpteenth movie where Tom Cruise narrowly escapes all danger. Personally I wish that there were more movies with women in the lead roles.

For me this is a story of a woman who's fleeing from a void which trys to swallow her world. The hollowness formed by the death of her husband who was dead to her already seem to confuse her. She isn't really sure what to feel. Legacy of her ex-husband is the means of survival but it's also a burden she carries. I think she feel that way because of the coldness in their now dead relationship.

The way she carelessly throw green which is already scarce and cry lonely in her bed when she looses Frank is heartbreaking it's loosing same person twice. Meanwhile Malcolm; a creation of a mess seems to eject from pain and bitterness of the reality and sadly appear to be carrying forward certain amount of indecisiveness in his own life. The last few frames show after seeing Malcolm's heart is ready to open for another our dear mama Frances go on a late night walk outside down a lonely street where she is not really alone as Frank as always behind her and in her mind.

As much as I love everything about Michelle Pfeiffer and her performance in French Exit is wonderful, the film itself is not.

The story is old and goes like this.... I am a rich socialite; therefore, I am eccentric/quirky and so is everyone in my life. We all know that is not how real life plays out and I am getting very tired of that storyline.

As mentioned all the characters are strange in one way or another. They don't seem to fit with each other or with Michelle's character. A very strange mishmash of people who do not fit together or even seem to like each other.....they all have some underlying story that does not go anywhere.

I got the impression that there is supposed to be some deep, dark meaning attached to this story. BUT I don't like playing guessing games and prefer everything is out in the open.

A great little film. Perfect performances, stylish and funny.

I don't know how people rated this movie great. I didn't find any part of it to have dark humour either. It was slow paced, boring and depressing. The only credit I'll give it is that it was well acted. Just not sure who wants to waste over an hour of their life watching a self centred, horrible womens day to day struggle of having to live without millions and dragging her poor son down with her. Horrible depressing movie with zero entertainment value as far as Im concerned.

The movie French Exit is all about a rich widow Frances Price (actress Michelle Pfeiffer)who has run out of all her money because she did not expect to live that long . Frances is level headed, beautiful, kind and nice. The relationship between Frances and her son Malcolm (Lucas hedges who wasgreat in movie Manchester by the Sea)is very pleasant, caring and real. Malcolm understands his mother very well and shows his support and respect for her when he says his goodbye to girlfriend Susan (Imogen Poots) to move to Paris with his mom. Frances is very generous and enjoys seeing others happy with unexpected tips. The conversation between Frances and homeless person with a detailed plan of how he would spend $20 is very nicely done. The conversations between Frances and odd lady Mme Reynard ( Valerie Mahaffey from ABC series The Big Sky) show distinct differences between an independent woman who is in control of her life and an odd lady who longs for anybody's company to avoid being alone. There are long silences in the movie. Screenplay is good but the movie needed editing . Michelle Pfeiffer did exceptionally well as Frances. 1hr53minutes too long.

Yes, Michelle Pfeiffer can act.. And the cat was very intelligent.. otherwise a truly meandering, meaningless, but especially pretentious, indulgent, dishonest, narcissistic waste of time.. No plot, no believable characters, no character arc, a true waste of money and time. I am sure the director and writer just LOVED themselves for producing this homage to their own imagined brilliance.

"Do you ever feel that you've had adulthood thrust upon you at too young an age? And that... you're still essentially a child... mimicking the behaviors of the grown-ups all around you so they won't uncover the meager contents of your heart?"

A few minutes in, I thought this is going to be one of these movies that adopt some sort of a false pretense in order to satirize the rich and upper class. Well, as I finished the movie I still think it is. But the story's attempts to dodge clichés surrounding this type of films had me constantly not only striving to classify it, but also quite baffled to know what's the point of it in the first place. Suffice it to say, it meanders a lot, especially regarding its tone which I'm not sure either the first act or Pfeiffer's magnetic performance as the delightfully sardonic Frances Price were enough to set it properly. As I said, it's meandering. And the whimsy of it being turned up to eleven in spasmodic bursts - while perfectly suits the oddball characters and the Anderson-esque style the movie has about it - feels a bit incongruous with the tender and emotive core of the story that I could catch glimpses of as the story progresses and its caustic layer being peeled off sporadically. With some touches that border on surrealism and a beguilingly sinster flair, I believe the movie become very close to going completely off the rails in its latter half to the point of stretching its believability a little too far. But everything was done efficiently and with great panache so much so I couldn't help reconciling myself with whatever this film is trying to achieve and I think I was well rewarded. By the end, my concerns were slapped across the face for everything seemed to make perfect sense despite being admittedly all over the place, and I finally could figure out what it is about - hopefully. Without getting into details to avoid spoiling anything, I think French Exit is a character study of a woman, Frances Price, who tries to break away from the phony life she leads. She's fundamentally a good and "real" person, but she's confined to the stereotypes of her aristocratic social strata. She takes a huge step towards fulfilling her purpose, only to find that the consequences of such action come arbitrarily and at a time she's neither financially, mentally nor emotionally prepared for, the thing that resulted in her having a midlife crisis of sorts. Lucas Hedges does an excellent job at complementing this with his understated performance as Frances's son, Malcolm. But Pfeiffer really knocked it out of the park here! French Exit is a bizarre satirical dramedy that I may have enjoyed a little too much. It boasts some deadpan humour that I couldn't resist. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's definitely worth checking out.

The best thing about this film is Michelle Pfeiffer's amazing performance. Lucas Hedges is very good too. The plot at first seems really promising and interesting but then it takes a very stupid turn. In addition to the stupid story, the movie has so many silly childish nonsensical moments. French Exit could've been a great film but it's just disappointing and an unsatisfying watch.