Reviewer: Bruce Pierini (not sure if this movie is available for streaming, but if you tend to agree with Bruce, it doesn’t matter. and apologies, because he wrote it in April and I thought I had published it, but what with deteriorating gray cells and senility and all, I just realized I hadn’t.)
First trip back today (4.18.21) to an art house cinema for French Exit with Michele Pfeiffer. I admit going mostly for big screen views of Paris (aren’t we all dying to travel?) and I had read a rather bad review going in. So I wasn’t expecting much. Well I wasn’t disappointed. I could find very little to like. The two leads, Pfeiffer and Lucas Hodges have the emotional range of an earthworm. I don’t know how much the fault is the screenplay (Do upper-class New Yorkers really talk in such stilted ways?). There is little wit in most attempts to be darkly humorous.
For us to identify and care about the main character, an aloof, seen-it-all and over-the-hill former socialite-glamour queen, we need to get something from her character that can explain her ennui and thus allow us to emphathize with her. As it was I didn’t care if she were hit by a bus. It’s all a kind of a forced screenplay that is too-clever-by-half.
Definitely one to skip.
New York Cynic 