The comings and goings, mishaps and misunderstandings, and spurts of slapstick (a bumped head, a punched nose) have a screwball zaniness reminiscent of the bravura Connecticut house sequence in Baumbach's Mistress America. 7:00 PM PDT 10/10/2020 by Jon Frosch FACEBOOK TWITTER EMAIL ME Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges in 'French Exit.' 7 – 2000-Present: Life After the Handover, The History of Hong Kong Action Cinema Pt. Is Malcolm's filial steadfastness rooted in genuine love, or is it a form of Stockholm syndrome? File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI |, Tracy Letts attends the premiere of "Ford v Ferrari" in Los Angeles on November 4. Jacobs stages it with energy and elegance, his DP Tobias Datum using the wide frame to take in the zigging and zagging and shifting geometry of this makeshift family, then, in quieter moments, pulling us closer to the ever-mesmerizing planes and angles of Pfeiffer's face. A close-to-penniless widow moves to Paris with her son and cat, who also happens to be her reincarnated husband. A comedy of manners ensues. https://t.co/2mOl9T2gMQ #NYFF pic.twitter.com/zzrcGM0uPG— New York Film Festival (@TheNYFF) August 11, 2020, Michelle Pfeiffer's "French Exit" has been selected as the closing night film for the New York Film Festival. But Frances' life of cloistered privilege is soon disrupted by an inconvenient reality: She's broke, having spent almost the entire inheritance left by her late husband (whose body, we learn, Frances found and then abandoned for several days while on a weekend jaunt). From the start, French Exit — much like a Wes Anderson movie — relies on the viewer accepting the internal logic of the bizarro bubble-world it depicts. 110. by Stephanie Archer. Meanwhile, Madeleine returns to lead seances communicating with the escaped Small Frank, who, it turns out (as voiced by Tracy Letts), is pretty nasty — more Behemoth from Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita than Paw-Paw from Miranda July's The Future, as talking felines go. Michelle Pfeiffer and … A mostly satisfying feast for Pfeiffer fans. As he proved in two other sensitive studies of oddballs (his best film, Momma's Man, and deWitt-scripted follow-up Terri), Jacobs is a deft commingler of tones and registers; he makes space for both grotesquerie and pathos, and knows how to locate the latter in the former. Frances is larger-than-life, but it's her all-too-human foibles and idiosyncrasies that make the filmmaker, and us, love her. Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics Sign up to get our cinematic goodness delivered to your inbox every weekend. Its quirky and awkward characters, its absurd interactions, and its overall journey is eclectic and eccentric. Jon Frosch File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI |, Lucas Hedges arrives on the red carpet at the "Ben is Back" New York premiere in 2018.