French Exit 2021

After a bank seizes the property of Manhattan heiress Frances Price, Michelle Pfeiffer and her son Malcolm Price Lucas Hedges are left with almost nothing. They liquidate what they can, relocate to a small Paris apartment owned by Frances’s sister, and take along their cat, Small Frank, who is revealed to be the reincarnated husband, Franklin Price Tracy Letts.

On the journey to Europe, Malcolm meets Madeleine the Medium [Danielle Macdonald], a fortune teller who predicts the death of a passenger and immediately recognizes the uncanny link between the cat Small Frank and Franklin Price. The encounter stirs thin undercurrents of fate and memory, pulling Frances and Malcolm into a web of revelations they must navigate.

In Paris, Frances befriends neighbor Mme Reynard [Valerie Mahaffey], and tensions rise when Frances attempts to strangle Small Frank, an act that sends the cat fleeing into the city. To uncover the truth about Madeleine, Frances hires private investigator Julius [Isaach De Bankolé], who arranges a séance in which Franklin speaks to the group. Through a series of flashbacks, the audience learns how Franklin died: Frances found him dead on a bed with the cat perched atop him, but she waited days to tell the police, a delay that weighs on her conscience and casts a shadow over Malcolm’s sense of truth and family.

Malcolm, meanwhile, reaches out to his fiancée Susan [Imogen Poots], whom he left behind in New York, only to discover she has reconciled with her previous fiancé, Tom [Daniel di Tomasso]. Tom travels to Paris after a confrontation, while Susan stays with Malcolm, torn between old loyalties and a new closeness that has formed between them.

A second séance with Madeleine intensifies Frances’s need for retribution, and she appears to confront Franklin in a new way. As Frances walks the streets of Paris, she is trailed by Small Frank, a haunting presence that seems to mirror her unresolved grief. The narrative returns to the past in a long, lingering flashback: Frances returns to the school where Malcolm is, and the film closes on her telling him that, from now on, he must learn to coexist with her in a world where memory blurs with the living present. The story weaves together grief, memory, and the unsettling idea that love and loss can collide in the most intimate corners of a shared life.