Though the premieres themselves were relegated to virtual screenings and outer borough drive-ins, the 55th annual New York Film Festival concluded with a barnstormer in French Exit. Though the reviews for the film itself were not unanimous, there’s one thing most agree on: Michelle Pfeiffer seems a sure bet for an Academy Award nomination.
Variety critic Peter Debruge went so far as to wonder which clip the Oscars telecast will use as the year’s nominees are read, suggesting there is a surfeit. He called Pfeiffer’s performance of a wealthy Manhattanite suddenly faced with insolvency “a perfect Dorothy Parker character, and in Pfeiffer’s hands — or her clutches, we might say — privilege has seldom seemed so delectable.”
Directed by Azazel Jacobs and based on a novel by Patrick DeWitt (who adapted the screenplay) Pfeiffer plays a widow who must face the fact that she did not, as was her plan, die before the money ran out. As such, she, her son (Lucas Hedges) and her cat (voiced, yes, voiced by Tracey Letts, who may be the reincarnation of her late husband) all quit New York for an apartment in Paris.
While Pfeiffer’s Frances Price is “a smorgasbord of side-eye and shade, of lacerating one-liners dispatched between drags on cigarettes and slurps of martinis,” according to Hollywood Reporter critic Jon Frosch, he noted a “sense of tremulous vulnerability beneath the campy hauteur,” concluding that the performance “ranks among her most captivatingly Pfeiffer-ian.”
Writing for The Playlist, critic Tomris Laffly called Pfeiffer “a vision: chilly and distant at first, but deeply, even painfully relatable in the aftermath to anyone preoccupied with a future of unknowns,” adding “she expertly masticates and spits out her lines with musical precision.”
Pete Hammond at Deadline wrote “it is hard to imagine a better performance from a long Oscar-overdue star than what Pfeiffer delivers here.”
As Anne Thompson at Indiewire noted, Pfeiffer has been thrice nominated (for supporting actress in Dangerous Liaisons and for lead actress in The Fabulous Baker Boys and Love Field) but has yet to win. This “slim year” of Oscar contenders, as she put it, may work in this veteran’s favor.
At the NYFF virtual press conference, Pfeiffer said she based the character off of a compilation of people she knew, which, perhaps, may dispatch some of her acquaintances into some late night spirals of self-reflection.
But not everyone has nice things to say. Benjamin Lee at The Guardian gave it the lowest possible rating (one star), summed it up as “annoying,” and compared it to “watching the first night of a very bad play, awkward coughs filling the dead air.”
French Exit will be released in February 2021, which, during this unusual pandemic year, still makes it eligible for most of the major awards.
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
— A First Look at Diana and Margaret Thatcher in The Crown Season Four
— Celebs Roast Trump in Rhyme for John Lithgow’s Trumpty Dumpty Book
— Brace Yourself for George Clooney’s Apocalyptic Movie The Midnight Sky
— The Best Shows and Movies Streaming This October
— Inside Netflix’s Latest Binge-able Escape, Emily in Paris
— The Crown’s Young Stars on Prince Charles and Princess Di
— From the Archive: How Hollywood Sharks, Mafia Kingpins, and Cinematic Geniuses Shaped The Godfather
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.