French Exit (2020)

(On Cable TV, October 2021) As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, character-based films are best when they’re studies of entertainingly flawed characters, and it doesn’t take long in French Exit to understand that Michelle Pfeiffer plays a woman with a substantial number of issues. The defining event in her history seems to have been not calling the authorities for a few days (and a skiing vacation) after discovering her husband’s corpse, but that’s far from the only noteworthy quirk in her character. As the film begins, she decides to react to her lack of money by moving to Paris with her son (not really asking for his opinion beforehand) and burn through the rest of her funds with the intention of killing herself once the bill comes due. The film gets quite weird as it goes on, with steadily bigger dips into fantasy as the dead protagonist’s husband starts talking through the black cat she’s lugging around. The weirdness literally accumulates in the Parisian apartment where she makes her last stand, in the form of various characters that join the fun. It’s clear that Pfeiffer is the best thing about French Exit, closely followed by a handful of individual scenes that show her lack of grace in the face of her planned exit. Unfortunately, there’s not much more to the film—the overarching story is dull and empty, the conclusion only makes sense in the absence of any new material, and the weirdness of the film segments fails to build up to something that would wrap it all up in a more meaningful whole. We’re left to see Pfeiffer chew scenery (or set it on fire), which is not a bad time per se, but feels aimless in the absence of a plot strong enough to sustain her character. As much as we can claim that character studies don’t have to have a plot, it’s always better when they do.