NYFF 58 Review: Plights of the Rich and Irritable Come to Pass in ‘The French Exit’
It only takes one visit from her financial advisor to turn Frances Price’s (Michelle Pfeiffer) life upside down. For years, she’s been living off the fortune of her deceased husband where the spoils of New York high society have become standard. But now at sixty-five years old, Frances is flat broke. She doesn’t know exactly when it happened, but truthfully, the last several years were one big haze of regressive decline so it’s no surprise she finds herself here.
What’s left are a lot of expensive things. Things that fill her New York home, but fall short of any real significance. So she sells it all, taking what she can pull together and making her swift exit to France with the hopes that life across the Atlantic will yield something new and different for her flailing senior years. Accompanying her on this escape is her despondent son Malcom (Lucas Hedges), a floating twenty-something who’s dodging commitments to his fiancé (Imogen Poots), and their sour black cat who just so happens to be the physical incarnation of her six-feet under husband Frank (voiced by Tracy Letts). Together the trio form a petulant bunch, unable to find immediate resolve from the plights carried over from New York. But Frances has a contingency plan: when the money runs out, she will kill herself, and that will be that.
Unchecked, the plights of these aristocrats would be something to scoff at. After all, this isn’t the 1940s and 50s where wealth is romanticized on screen. This is 2020, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It would be rather difficult, nay impossible, to sympathize with characters based on the 1% if there weren’t a pervading cognizance that rightful debases their privilege. In accordance with that sentiment, Azazel Jacobs’ imbues The French Exit with the same absurdism found in the novel it’s adapted from, creating an offbeat, oddball comedy that doesn’t ask for sympathy for the riches to rags scenario Frances find herself in, but rather to observe a person facing long-term emotional trauma within that scenario. Unfortunately, how it all plays out is anything but sympathetic.
Despite the film’s efforts, one can’t help but feel distanced by our leads and their actions. Maybe its the fact that their money is all gone and their lives can no longer be propped up by monetary stilts, or maybe it’s because the air is thick with highfalutin snobbery peddled as comedy. But the sum effect of The French Exit’s tone can be quite grating. Satirical cynicism, obtuse quirkiness, and cut-and-dry absurdity are deployed to level these rich fellows, particularly on the behalf of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Frances, but it misses the mark in most cases.
One scene in particular shows Frances trying to give away her money to a homeless man in an effort to expedite her earthly departure. For her, it’s a last ditch effort to give her life qualifying meaning before she goes. But the homeless man identifies this, soundly rejecting her offer as the film signals life’s existential problems can’t be cured with money. It’s here where the film at least acknowledges the aura of privilege radiating from the Prices, but it can’t shake that notion from characterizing the situation as a whole.
Throughout Frances makes a litany of cutting and snide remarks to the people she encounters that inhibits any good will the film tries to earn. A ‘fan’ of the Prices (Valerie Mahaffey) invites both Frances and Malcom over to a dinner party only to be met with dismissive remarks once they arrive. A clairvoyant (Danielle Macdonald) who serves as the communicator between the Prices and feline Frank is met with demand when Frances needs her. And the trove of guests who come in and out of the Price’s Paris apartment should anticipate at least one ill-toned comment from the broke widow during their stay.
In fact the film is at its best when all these odd characters come together in said apartment, their disparate collective forming a comedic circus of sorts where eight people are housed in one space. In these moments when Frances is deemphasized, you can begin to see a harmony in The French Exit’s muddied tone. It’s unfortunate, though, that these moments come at the price of Frances and her brand of comedy.
As the money dwindles further and further, the problems facing the Prices start to come to a head. Malcom’s love life gets straightened out after a series of on-again, off-again cycles with his fiancé. Frances’ feline husband reaches an ambiguous resolve after years of contentious impasse. And Frances and Malcom’s relationship, the heart and sole of the film, amends with the vacancy of a father figure. Despite the notable lack of money, these formerly affluent socialites have found closure. The problem is arriving here requires quite the tolerance for the rich and irritable.
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