'French Exit': Michelle Pfeiffer calls her surreal dramedy a 'top 5' role at New York Film Festival

If "Emily in Paris" is a glass of sweet champagne, then "French Exit" is a stiff martini. 

The binge-able Netflix series and new Michelle Pfeiffer movie, respectively, both take place in the City of Light. But unlike Emily (Lily Collins), who moves to Paris for a lucrative job opportunity, Frances (Pfeiffer) goes to escape. 

Frances is the acid-tongued matriarch at the heart of "French Exit," which makes its world premiere Saturday at the New York Film Festival as the closing night selection. As part of the re-imagined COVID-era fest, the tartly funny drama will play at drive-in theaters in Brooklyn and Queens Saturday night, along with two virtual screenings. 

'Emily in Paris':Lily Collins compares Netflix show to 'Sex and the City'

'Mass incarceration is slavery':New documentary highlights the fight for clemency in 'Time'

Based on Patrick deWitt's absurdist 2018 novel, "French Exit" follows Frances, a once-wealthy widow, and her adult son, Malcolm (Lucas Hedges), as they flee New York when Frances learns she's insolvent. They move into a friend's unoccupied Paris apartment along with their cat, Small Frank (voiced by Tracy Letts), who goes missing shortly after their arrival.

We soon learn that Small Frank is actually Frances' reincarnated husband. A decade earlier, Frances found her husband's dead body and proceeded to go on a days-long ski trip before contacting authorities, and neither the talking cat nor Manhattan high society have let her forget it. But even on the other side of the Atlantic, Frances is still confronted with misery and mortality, while Malcolm must work through his own romantic hangups brought on by his absent parents. 

New York Film Festival:All the best movies we saw, ranked

The film is directed by Azazel Jacobs (2017's "The Lovers") and written by deWitt, adapting from his book. Pfeiffer, 62, recalls feeling drawn to the script's dark humor and authentically human characters, despite the "odd world" they inhabit. 

"I have found in my life, the most dire situations are sometimes when people are at their funniest," Pfeiffer said Friday afternoon in a Zoom conference with journalists. "When my father died, when my mother died – it's a way that people release. It is a defense mechanism. So to me, (the film's comedy is) not unusual. That's what makes it so real, actually."

To play the drink-swilling, lavishly dressed Frances, Pfeiffer says she drew from "friends who grew up in this world: New York socialite, sort of elite. I'm a girl from Orange County, California, and I always felt weirdly outside, especially when they all got together. I always felt very pedestrian when I was around them." 

The "Batman Returns" actress gets an arsenal of acerbic one-liners and deliciously vile moments. (In one memorable scene, Frances lights a table on fire because the waiter is taking too long with the check.) Pfeiffer, a three-time Oscar nominee (last nominated in 1993 for "Love Field") calls "French Exit" a "fun" career high point. 

"I would definitely put it in my Top 5 of wonderful filmmaking experiences," she says. "The cast was so extraordinary, and when you get that kind of writing and you're not struggling with it, it just carries you. The tone was so specific and yet so hard to describe."

The "Scarface" star bonded early with on-screen son Hedges, 23, a rising star best known for "Lady Bird" and his Oscar-nominated role in "Manchester by the Sea." It helped that they shot Frances and Malcolm's climatic emotional scene within the first week of filming. 

"After that scene, I really felt like you were my mom," Hedges told Pfeiffer Friday. "I felt like I didn't know you, and then after that scene, I was in love with you. You won me over completely. And I'm so glad that was like in the first week, because I needed that early."

"Well," Pfeiffer smiled, "you won me over at hello." 

"French Exit" will be released by Sony Pictures Classics on Feb. 12, 2021, just before the new Oscar-qualifying cutoff date of Feb. 28. 

Academy makes major change:Drive-in movies can now qualify for 2021 Oscars