The Caustic Grace of 'French Exit' : vimarsana.com

The Caustic Grace of 'French Exit'


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Early in Azazel Jacobs’s film
French Exit, a “tragedy of manners”—per its screenwriter Patrick DeWitt, who also wrote the novel it’s based on—a character wistfully remarks, “They broke the mold with that one.” They’re referring to Frances Price, an elegant, aloof sixtysomething widow who sells off the last vestiges of her dead husband’s large estate and retires to Paris with her adult son, Malcolm. Yet they just as easily could be talking about Michelle Pfeiffer, the actress who plays Frances in the film and one of the great movie stars of the back half of the 20th century. From the early 1980s through the mid-’90s, Pfeiffer worked with some of America’s most celebrated auteurs (Scorsese, De Palma, Nichols, Demme) and more than held her own against some of the best working male actors of their era: Pacino (twice), Nicholson (twice), Bridges (Jeff and Beau), Malkovich, Gibson, Connery, not to mention her role as the definitive Catwoman to Keaton’s Batman. She can sell a line as well or better than anyone in the industry and can command a frame’s focus like the Golden Age stars of yore. Her compulsive watchability rendered her one of the most compelling actresses of her generation.

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