French Exit (Azazel Jacobs, 2020) (Patreon)

Did you know that Woody Allen had a new film this year? Apparently some nonsense called Rifkin's Festival, about a guy hanging out at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. It quietly world premiered at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. Who cares, right? 

Well, based on the harmless but unengaging French Exit, Azazel Jacobs is just one more filmmaker who is more than happy to try and insinuate himself into the power vacuum left by the Woodman's complete (North American) cancellation. New York upper-crust, relative cultural isolation, movement from one global metropolis to another, and a heaping helping of moneyed neurosis. It's all here, and while much of this can be chalked up to Patrick deWitt's source novel (he also wrote the screenplay), Jacobs' direction follows the essential Allen template. Unadorned two-shots in New York give way to moonlight-on-the cobblestones Parisian exteriors, accompanied by jazz clarinet. 

But actually, this near-homage only serves to point out French Exit's basic limitations. This is a film that's ostensibly concerned with mortality, but can only address the subject in scattershot ways. Frances Price (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a widow and aging socialite who discovers that the money she inherited from her bastard of a husband (voice of Tracy Letts) has dried up. So she sells everything she can and moves herself, her son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges), and their cat Small Frank to Paris, to stay at the empty apartment of a friend (Susan Coyne). But along the way, we are introduced to the idea -- presented as fact, actually -- that the cat contains the soul of the deceased patriarch.

It's refreshing to see a film work so deftly with a feline, to see a cat moving / being moved so deliberately through the frame and used as a contrast in scale with its human companions. Of course, the cinema prefers dogs, because they are much easier to train and their more obsequious relationship to human beings is presumed to make viewers more sympathetic to them. What we discover with French Exit, however, is that Jacobs and deWitt have gone with a cat because of their stereotypical connection to the occult. The cat is black, and is seen possibly sucking the soul out of the dead man. What's more, Small Frank, when he hear from "him," is a rotten guy, self-centered and preoccupied with his own petty grievances. 

I'm not so much bothered by the fact that French Exit doesn't strike a blow in favor of Feline Liberation. Rather, its treatment of Small Frank is just an example of the film's dependence on received ideas. From wacky cruise ship mediums (Danielle Macdonald) and taciturn private eyes (Issach de Bankolé) to dithering expats (Valerie Mahaffey) and jilted, square-jawed boyfriends "in finance" (Daniel di Tomasso), French Exit is just a bit too much like a Noah Baumbach / Whit Stillman / Sofia Coppola smoothie, which itself tastes like a watered-down version of Midnight in Paris or You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

Perfect closing night film, in other words. Oh well. NYFF's gonna NYFF.