Movie Breakdown: French Exit (Noah)

Pre-Screening Stance:

Patrick DeWitt’s book – French Exit – is such a delightfully melancholic creation. Michelle Pfeiffer is perfect casting for the enjoyably caustic widower Frances Price. I’m always worried about book-to-film adaptations but I’ve got my fingers crossed for this one.

Post-Screening Ramble:

French Exit isn’t a bad movie, it’s just one that misses the mark it’s aiming for. Michelle Pfeiffer (again, such perfect casting for this role) plays Frances Price, a long time widow who has finally spent all of her dead husband’s substantial fortune. With depression looming, and her gracefully moronic son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) struggling in his own right, Frances sells all of her belongings and – with Malcolm – escapes to live out her days in the Parisian apartment of a close friend. This is a film that wants to be whimsically sad, that wants to turn the darkness at its heart into frothy amusement. This is a difficult task, to take the small miseries of human existence and make them enjoyable, and French Exit oversteps. Where a better director (say Wes Anderson, who director Azazel Jacobs seems mightily indebted to) would find the balance of sadness and humor, Jacobs leans too far over in both directions and the melancholy of the film becomes dullness and the humor becomes mawkish predictability. Lucas Hedges seems to believe that speaking slowly is a way to broadcast pain, and his performance is boring enough to slow down nearly every scene he enters. Pfeiffer carries the film as far as she can, her Frances Price like Cruella DeVille on Valium, but even her fantastic performance can’t balance out the film’s worst habits. It has its moments, but it never lives up to what it wants to be.

One Last Thing:

Valerie Mahaffey is fantastic in this film and should be cast in character roles in all movies going forward. All of them.