Michelle Pfeiffer/Joe Gatto, James Murray, Sal Vulcano & Brian Quinn/Baio/Matt Cameron

Old socialite goes to Paris to die, we were mostly disappointed.

Michelle and Paris and a black cat--What's not to like?

An Oscar-worthy Performance From Pfeiffer

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Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges in French Exit (2020)

I had a moment earlier this year when I realized when you get older you don't even want love. Not kind we believed in when we were younger. Who has the energy for that? When I think of the way we used to carry on about it.

Men and women throwing themselves out of windows. What you want is to know someone's there; but you also want them to leave you alone.

Lucas Hedges and Danielle Macdonald in French Exit (2020)

Isaach de Bankolé, Lucas Hedges, Daniel di Tomasso French exit

Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel di Tomasso in French exit

Michelle Pfeiffer

Lucas Hedges

Tracy Letts

Patrick DeWitt

An aging Manhattan socialite existing on the last of her inheritance moves to a small Paris apartment with her son and cat.

Azazel Jacobs

French Exit

Michelle and Paris and a black cat--What&apos;s not to like?

With the adjective &quot;French&quot; 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&apos;s French, but don&apos;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&apos;t fit snugly with the overarching themes of love and friendship at the end of things. At French Exit&apos;s end, it is far more melancholy than funny.

Dutiful son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) accompanies her to a friend&apos;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&apos;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&apos;t bring himself to tell his mother he&apos;s engaged, for goodness&apos;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.

&quot;My plan was to die before the money ran out,&quot; says 60-year-old penniless Manhattan socialite Frances Price (Michelle Pfeiffer), but things didn&apos;t go as planned. Her husband Franklin has been dead for 12 years and with his vast inheritance gone, she cashes in the last of her possessions and resolves to live out her twilight days anonymously in a borrowed apartment in Paris, accompanied by her directionless son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) and a cat named Small Frank--who may or may not embody the spirit of Frances&apos;s dead husband.

Official Trailer

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYWFkZDc4OWItYTNiMC00ODE4LTk1NmQtZTg4MDkwZDgyYzJiXkEyXkFqcGdeQXZ3ZXNsZXk@._V1_.jpg

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.

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