Synopsis
“My plan was to die before the money ran out,” says 60-year-old penniless Manhattan socialite Frances Price, but things didn’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 and a cat named Small Frank—who may or may not embody the spirit of Frances’s dead husband.
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Cast
- Michelle PfeifferFrances Price
- Lucas HedgesMalcolm Price
- Tracy LettsFranklin Price (voice)
- Valerie MahaffeyMme Reynard
- Susan CoyneJoan
- Imogen PootsSusan
- Danielle MacdonaldMadeleine the Medium
- Isaach De BankoléJulius
- Daniel Di TomassoTom
- Eddie HollandYoung Malcolm Price
Recommendations
- 70
The Hollywood Reporter
Pfeiffer's performance in this uneven but charming adaptation of Patrick deWitt's 2018 novel certainly isn't her subtlest, but it ranks among her most captivatingly Pfeiffer-ian. - 70
Variety
Yes, French Exit blisters amid the rarefied air of Tom Wolfe or Whit Stillman, but it’s nicely cut with the schadenfreude of “Schitt’s Creek.” - 67
Entertainment Weekly
There's more to admire than to love in Azazel Jacobs' arch drawing-room comedy, with its surreal styling and arch Wes Anderson-y tics — and something essential lost, maybe, in screenwriter Patrick deWitt's own adaptation of his acclaimed 2018 novel of the same name. - 67
IndieWire
The result is an anodyne if increasingly tender little film that would have been lost in its own lineage if not for the strength of its cast. - 66
TheWrap
French Exit walks an uneasy line between darkness and light, elegance and eccentricity, delicious humor and disturbing tragedy. These are not normal people, and this is not a normal film. But Pfeiffer makes it an odd, enjoyably twisty ride. - 65
Slashfilm
The film does not waste the brilliance of its two leading performances. But it doesn’t expand much upon their skilled interpretations, either. - 63
Slant Magazine
In French Exit’s best passages, sadness and curt, resonant comedy exist side by side unceremoniously. - 50
The A.V. Club
The film’s artificial, stylized remove—what might be called his current style, a kind of half-ironic, half-romantic wooziness—seems an odd landing point for the scrappy DIY filmmaker behind Momma’s Man and the genuinely touching and hilarious Terri, which DeWitt also wrote and which was so human it hurt.
