French Exit: the Book & Upcoming Film

It sounds like something I’d like. Interesting that several Amazon reviewers (not critics) loathed it.

A Recommended Book of the Season from Vanity Fair * Entertainment Weekly * Vulture * The Millions * Publishers Weekly * Esquire

From bestselling author Patrick deWitt, a brilliant and darkly comic novel about a wealthy widow and her adult son who flee New York for Paris in the wake of scandal and financial disintegration.

Frances Price – tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature – is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there’s the Price’s aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.

Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Light serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self destruction and economical ruin – to riotous effect. A number of singular characters serve to round out the cast: a bashful private investigator, an aimless psychic proposing a seance, and a doctor who makes house calls with his wine merchant in tow, to name a few.

Brimming with pathos, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind 'tragedy of manners,' a send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother/son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute.

R1 probably fat Fraus from Alabama who bought it based on the cover and don’t understand subtlety or nuance.

Its *

I know. “Oh, Dear.” Autocorrect.

I just got that from the library last week!

R5 let us know what you think, once you’re done.

any thoughts?

C'mon, doesn't "French Exit" sound like some bizarre new kinky sexual thing?

If it were it sounds pretty disgusting.

Just finished reading it. Somewhat witty, dark humor. But not really DL level. Given lack of anything good recently, it’s worth a read. But nothing extraordinary or raucously funny or witty.

The trailer is out. Release on February 12, 2021

Lucas Hedges is a goooood looking man.

Yes, I read it a couple months ago. It was very entertaining, until it was not. The timing of this movie is terrible.

Is it true that Glennie is playing the cat?

Too bad he's a fug. Nobody is watching this.

I will. I love them both.

Great movie compared to the usual schlock that Hollywood puts out now, but I couldn’t stop thinking during the entire movie how it would have been a masterpiece if Woody Allen directed, it was perfect material for him. Michelle’s performance was almost perfect, but Lucas is miscast.

Michelle’s character is quirkier in the book, the movie was a little too corporate Hollywood looking.