French Exit

(Azazel Jacobs, UK/Canada, 2020)

Frances (Michelle Pfeiffer) is someone who has wandered in and out of the life of her son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges). She lives by her own laconic code, flaunting the rules of sociability and draining the money left behind by her late husband.

The adult Malcolm, in turn, has become dependent and maladaptive, especially in his awkward relationship with his girlfriend, Susan (Imogen Poots).

As a final gesture of ‘exit’, Frances moves with son and cat to France.

Beginning as an upper-class version of Bill Forsyth’s Housekeeping (1987), French Exit eventually wanders – as it picks up strange characters and supernatural events – into the eccentricity and whimsy of Wes Anderson territory.

However, the approach of director Azazel Jacobs (son of Flo & Ken Jacobs) to the material (scripted by novelist Patrick deWitt) is closer to the even, dispassionate, sometimes rather flattening gaze of Todd Solondz.

On the positive side, the film avoids the usual touristic views of Paris in order to concentrate on its ensemble of misfits and loners suddenly jammed into the same apartment.

French Exit is, above all, a remarkable showcase for the talent of Michelle Pfeiffer. She at last receives a role that is worthy of her.

Plus: listen for the voice of playwright-actor Tracy Letts as a grumpy, spectral, off-screen presence.

© Adrian Martin October 2021