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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.