FRENCH EXIT
***
Director: Azazel Jacobs
Screenplay: Patrick deWitt, based on his eponymous novel.
Principal cast:
Michelle Pfeiffer
Lucas Hedges
Valerie Mahaffey
Danielle Macdonald
Imogen Poots
Tracy Letts
Country: Canada/Ireland
Classification: M
Runtime: 110 mins.
Australian release date: 18 March 2021.
As one gets older, the idea of running out of money before one shuffles off this mortal coil is… well, a thought worse than death. In Azazel Jacob’s French Exit, a Manhattan socialite finds herself in that very position - about to become penniless - having burnt through the large inheritance bequeathed to her by her husband, who died 12 years earlier. “My plan was to die before the money ran out,” she explains. This is a woman who has spent much of her pampered life in the social pages of the New York Times and she can’t countenance going downhill in the glare of the public eye, so she sells the last of her furniture and art collection and heads off to a borrowed apartment in Paris to while away the rest of her days anonymously. She’s not entirely on her own, though, because she’s accompanied by her aimless son and her treasured cat, which she manages to sneak through customs.
Frances Price (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a glamourous, rather bitter woman, who has lost her joie de vivre along with her fortune. Her relationship with her now adult son, Malcolm (Lucas Hedges), really only commenced when she took him out of school, without warning, when he was 12-years-old and they have since developed a somewhat impassive, aloof connection. When Frances announces that they are leaving New York, Malcolm has to break the news to his girlfriend, Susan (Imogen Poots), who’s none too happy about it because Malcolm has never worked up the courage to tell his mother that he was about to get engaged. He’s so withdrawn, and so tied to his mum’s purse strings, that it doesn’t even occur to him to stay in the city with Susan. Once mother and son have settled into their new Parisian abode, an American neighbour, Madame Reynard (Valerie Mahaffey), inveigles her way into their lives, frankly admitting that she has always admired Frances and wants to be her friend, much to Frances’ chagrin. Add an eccentric clairvoyant, Madeleine the Witch (Australian actress Danielle Macdonald), a private detective (Isaach De Bankolé), and apartment owner Joan (Susan Coyne), to their soirées and a crazy jigsaw begins to take shape - and the relevance of the cat being called Small Frank becomes clear.
Canadian author Patrick deWitt’s wrote the script of French Exit, basing it on his eponymous novel, and it’s a wacky ride with a bunch of very eccentric, off-kilter people. Director Jacobs says, “[These people] couldn’t be any more different from me if they came from Mars. I’m not lying when I say I saw this as science fiction - I saw these types of people in Fellini films, and it gave me that warped, circus-like perspective.” Having said that, you can tell that he likes the characters and has a fondness for them. Pfeiffer’s performance is divine; she missed out on a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, but in any other year she’d have been a shoe-in. She portrays Frances as a woman who, despite her change of fortune, has not lost her jaded view of life and yet you still sense a vulnerability underneath her brusque exterior, even though her actions are often incomprehensible. Hedges also gives a terrific performance, as he did in Boy Erased and Ben Is Back; Malcolm is not particularly talky and he’s something of a tabula rasa, so it would have been a difficult role to play with conviction. Mention must also be made of Poots, Macdonald, Mahaffey and Coyne, who deliver nuanced portrayals of four fascinating women.
French Exit is multifaceted and absurd but it has its shortcomings, which makes you want to get hold of the novel to experience the moments that didn’t make it to the big screen. There is just too much that’s left unsaid and unexplained for the film to be entirely satisfying, despite its many moments of charm.
Screenplay: Patrick deWitt, based on his eponymous novel.
Principal cast:
Michelle Pfeiffer
Lucas Hedges
Valerie Mahaffey
Danielle Macdonald
Imogen Poots
Tracy Letts
Country: Canada/Ireland
Classification: M
Runtime: 110 mins.
Australian release date: 18 March 2021.
As one gets older, the idea of running out of money before one shuffles off this mortal coil is… well, a thought worse than death. In Azazel Jacob’s French Exit, a Manhattan socialite finds herself in that very position - about to become penniless - having burnt through the large inheritance bequeathed to her by her husband, who died 12 years earlier. “My plan was to die before the money ran out,” she explains. This is a woman who has spent much of her pampered life in the social pages of the New York Times and she can’t countenance going downhill in the glare of the public eye, so she sells the last of her furniture and art collection and heads off to a borrowed apartment in Paris to while away the rest of her days anonymously. She’s not entirely on her own, though, because she’s accompanied by her aimless son and her treasured cat, which she manages to sneak through customs.
Frances Price (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a glamourous, rather bitter woman, who has lost her joie de vivre along with her fortune. Her relationship with her now adult son, Malcolm (Lucas Hedges), really only commenced when she took him out of school, without warning, when he was 12-years-old and they have since developed a somewhat impassive, aloof connection. When Frances announces that they are leaving New York, Malcolm has to break the news to his girlfriend, Susan (Imogen Poots), who’s none too happy about it because Malcolm has never worked up the courage to tell his mother that he was about to get engaged. He’s so withdrawn, and so tied to his mum’s purse strings, that it doesn’t even occur to him to stay in the city with Susan. Once mother and son have settled into their new Parisian abode, an American neighbour, Madame Reynard (Valerie Mahaffey), inveigles her way into their lives, frankly admitting that she has always admired Frances and wants to be her friend, much to Frances’ chagrin. Add an eccentric clairvoyant, Madeleine the Witch (Australian actress Danielle Macdonald), a private detective (Isaach De Bankolé), and apartment owner Joan (Susan Coyne), to their soirées and a crazy jigsaw begins to take shape - and the relevance of the cat being called Small Frank becomes clear.
Canadian author Patrick deWitt’s wrote the script of French Exit, basing it on his eponymous novel, and it’s a wacky ride with a bunch of very eccentric, off-kilter people. Director Jacobs says, “[These people] couldn’t be any more different from me if they came from Mars. I’m not lying when I say I saw this as science fiction - I saw these types of people in Fellini films, and it gave me that warped, circus-like perspective.” Having said that, you can tell that he likes the characters and has a fondness for them. Pfeiffer’s performance is divine; she missed out on a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, but in any other year she’d have been a shoe-in. She portrays Frances as a woman who, despite her change of fortune, has not lost her jaded view of life and yet you still sense a vulnerability underneath her brusque exterior, even though her actions are often incomprehensible. Hedges also gives a terrific performance, as he did in Boy Erased and Ben Is Back; Malcolm is not particularly talky and he’s something of a tabula rasa, so it would have been a difficult role to play with conviction. Mention must also be made of Poots, Macdonald, Mahaffey and Coyne, who deliver nuanced portrayals of four fascinating women.
French Exit is multifaceted and absurd but it has its shortcomings, which makes you want to get hold of the novel to experience the moments that didn’t make it to the big screen. There is just too much that’s left unsaid and unexplained for the film to be entirely satisfying, despite its many moments of charm.