NYFF 2020 Film Review: French Exit
Michelle Pfeiffer brightens an otherwise Stilted comedy
Azazel Jacobs directs a memorably salty Michelle Pfeiffer in his adaptation of Patrick deWitt’s acclaimed novel, French Exit. The story of a wealthy heiress who moves to Paris with her son in the wake of financial insolvency, the film hews closely to its source material, but has difficulty accessing the text’s spirit. Even with Pfeiffer’s wickedly funny performance, an eclectic supporting cast, and deWitt’s own screenplay, French Exit wobbles in a scattered capriciousness that’s difficult to shake.
As the closing act of the 58th New York Film Festival, it’s only fitting that French Exit depicts an escapist departure from the Big Apple. An adaptation of Patrick deWitt’s Giller-nominated novel of the same name, the film bestows Michelle Pfeiffer her most substantial role in years. Lapping up her lines with an overdose of side-eye and sardonicism, Pfeiffer is undeniably the biggest draw, putting forth a biting diva turn that will assuredly give her fans a five-course meal. But while filmmaker Azazel Jacobs dutifully recreates the plot of the novel, along with an able cast of colorful characters, French Exit finds itself struggling to capture the novel’s playful noir.
Frances Price (Pfeiffer) is a New York widow whose husband (Tracy Letts) - almost assuredly a Madoff-style crook - died years ago. Against the adamant counsel of her financial advisor, Frances has all but burned through her sizable fortune, wryly lamenting: “My plan was to die before the money ran out, but I kept, and keep, not dying.” Selling off her remaining assets, she absconds New York with her son Malcolm (an awkwardly reserved Lucas Hedges), their cat Small Frank, and a few stacks of cash, opting to stay at her best friend Joan’s (Susan Coyne) empty Parisian apartment. Malcolm, leaving behind his heartbroken fiancée (Imogen Poots), has a contentious and complicated relationship with his icy mother, and harbors sentiments that teeter back and forth between pangs of Stockholm syndrome and feelings of genuine affection.
“Even with Pfeiffer’s wickedly funny performance, an eclectic supporting cast, and deWitt’s own screenplay, French Exit wobbles in a scattered capriciousness that’s difficult to shake.”
A bizarro amalgamation of Whit Stillman, Woody Allen, and Wes Anderson, French Exit telegraphs a charming absurdism bubbling just beneath the surface, but Jacobs’ stoic direction is resistant to embracing its source material’s whimsy. Deploying a lens that comes off as scattered rather than surreal, the film’s disparate pieces clearly blend more efficiently on the page, especially when it comes to the quirky characters that surround Frances and Malcolm in Paris. There’s an ever-expanding roster of eccentrics circling the narrative: a fellow widow desperate to please (Valerie Mahaffey), a humble French PI (Isaach De Bankolé), and a cruise ship clairvoyant (a dryly funny Danielle Macdonald) all bring a stark contrast against Frances’ razor-sharp cattiness. By the time Small Frank becomes possessed by Frances’ dead husband and Malcolm’s jilted fiancée re-enters the fray with a new boyfriend (Daniel di Tomasso), French Exit has committed to a full-on menagerie that it doesn’t quite know how to handle - these people are without a doubt intriguing, but we as an audience are always held at a distance, never fully invited into their reality-adjacent world.
French Exit may wrestle with its own capriciousness and inability to blend domestic drama with absurdist satire, but it’s worth watching for the performances alone. The chemistry between Pfeiffer and Hedges is immediately palpable, and Hedges digs deep to conjure something different from his typical “sad boy” archetype, striking at the unique vulnerability of a son who has just started to get to know his own mother. And Pfeiffer -unsurprisingly - remains the main event for the show, easily toggling between tortured malaise and larger-than-life theatricality. Swathed in extravagance with a face chiseled by contempt, Pfeiffer is a maelstrom of hilariously jaded apathy - if you’ve ever wanted to see a haunted woman commit arson in the wake of bad restaurant service, then French Exit is well worth the price of admission.
There’s a lot to admire about French Exit, but it also asks its audience to surrender to its whims without a proper framework. Its stiffness is one that impedes its farce, and once the novelty of its carnival cast wears off, the remains are a mishmash of tones that don’t quite fit together. French Exit probably isn’t the whiz-bang closing ceremony that the New York Film Festival envisioned, but it does give us a Michelle Pfeiffer performance for the ages - even if we’re forced to watch from the outside.
