Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B+

French Exit makes me long of the days when it was even possible for a movie to become a cult classic—or in this case, a gay cult classic. Not that there’s anything inherently gay or queer here—but, it could certainly be argued, it has a unique sort of camp sensibility. If this movie had come out, say, thirty years ago, it could easily have found its place alongside movies like Grey Gardens or What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Do people under the age of thirty even know what those movies are?

Now, there are just too many movies to choose from. There are even too many objectively good movies to choose from, one after the other, so a gem like French Exit easily slips through the cultural cracks. And I might even be hard pressed to call French Exit “objectively” great as a film. Plenty of it is uneven, and the actors’ over-enunciating takes some getting used to. But, this is the rare film where, if it’s for you—and god knows, this isn’t for everyone—you’ll be powerless to its pull. I just could not help but love this movie.

It took me a little while, too. In its first twenty minutes or so, I found myself drifting into my own thoughts, then distracted by what seemed like clunky dialogue. A scene in which Lucas Hedges speaks to Imogen Poots in quasi-deadpan tones that brought to mind a regional theater production in which the actors are trying too hard. But, then something magical happened, at around the 25-minute mark, when this movie completely turned me around on it. There are countless scenes in which, incredibly, it managed to be sort of . . . unhinged, but in a subtle way. How can any movie pull such a thing off? This one does it.

Hedges and Poots play would-be lovers Malcom and Susan, their intended engagement broken off indefinitely by Malcom’s eccentric (to say the least) mother, Frances—played by Michelle Pfeiffer, truly above all else, the reason to watch this movie. It must b said, however, that it’s not just her. Pfeiffer and Hedges are almost reliably wonderful in whatever part they play, but countless supporting players in this movie are also sheer delights. Take, for instance, Frences’s lonely neighbor after she moves to Paris to spend what little money she has left. Valerie Mahaffey plays Madame Reynard with a tightly wound comic sensibility that I just could not get enough of.

Did I mention a cat also plays prominently in the story? This movie would be utterly delightful even without “Small Frank,” whose wild significance to the plot I won’t spoil here, but to say his presence enhances the experience would be an understatement. Of course, that’s just so long as you can lose yourself in an odd movie like this, about a socially clueless widow and her grown son living in a friend’s Parisian apartment with little regard to how quickly the very last of their fortune is being whittled away. I’m not sure if “odd” is even the right word for it. This movie’s sensibility is somewhere in the space between “eccentric” and “quirky,” but with a decidedly dark bent to it. In other words, director Azazel Jacobs and writer Patrick DeWitt (adapting from his novel of the same name) somehow knew to make a movie custom made just for me.

Will you feel the same way? Odds are, probably not. But some of you might! I certainly want to share it, and I urge you to watch this film, currently available for about six dollars VOD.

And, sure, some of it makes no sense. Okay, maybe a lot of it. Its deceptively hilarious script makes up for a lot, such as how insanely easily Frances manages to “sneak” her cat through customs after she gets off the boat in France. Or the way Frances finds the fortune teller from the boat with the use of a Parisian private detective, and for reasons that never get adequately explained, they both wind up staying several nights with Frances and Malcolm in the same apartment. This movie is so much fun, you hardly care.

Still, it all comes back to Michelle Pfeiffer. Performances like this are what the word “iconic” was made for. That word is so overused it has lost all meaning, but Pfeiffer brings it full circle. I haven’t loved her so much in a movie since she played Catwoman nearly—let me check my notes—thirty years ago. This woman is a national treasure, she commands attention, and so does this charmingly peculiar movie.

*You won’t believe how much you’ll love hanging out with these people.*

Overall: B+