French Exit

Frances and Malcolm have been in Paris for a week when they receive an invitation to dinner with a personal note from a Mme Reynard, whom they haven’t met. Frances assumes the invitation is because she is still infamous, and prepares to do social battle. They walk to her house with Small Frank, and Frances tells Malcolm about her honeymoon with Franklin in Paris. She remembers that Franklin made her laugh, and asks Malcolm to share his memories of his father.

Malcolm remembers that when he was eight, he and Franklin went to the zoo. The gorillas had taken offense at Franklin and were hostile, beating the bars and screaming at him. He also remembers when Franklin took him to his private club; the other sons were more socially adept. Malcolm, nervous, drank too much soda and threw up. Franklin tipped the bartender to clean Malcolm up and put him in a cab home.

As he talks, he realizes Frances isn’t listening—she is looking for Mme Reynard’s address. When they arrive at the house, Small Frank darts away after a mouse.

They are surprised when Mme Reynard tells them that they are her only dinner guests. She is an American, and after her French husband died, she was lonely. She grew up in New York and had admired Frances and her friends. When she heard that Frances was in Paris, she decided to offer friendship.

Frances is rude at first, but Malcolm admonishes her, and she becomes friendlier. They drink martinis, and by the time dinner is ready, they are all drunk. Mme Reynard asks what they will do about their finances, but Frances doesn’t reveal her plan. Mme Reynard remembers when she saw Frances, 20 years earlier, at a restaurant. A man in her party confronted Frances about Franklin, who recently died. Rather than reply, Frances drank his cocktail, and Mme Reynard always remembered the incident. They smile, and Frances apologizes for her earlier behavior.

As the days pass, Malcolm watches the park across the street out his bedroom window. He begins to see patterns, like the couple who are having an affair, or the men who live in the park. He is envious of their male friendships, having never had one himself. One day he sees four pigeons distancing themselves from a fifth. It falls dead from a branch onto the stomach of a man sleeping below. The man wakes, confused, but has no one to tell.

They realize it is Christmas Eve, and Malcolm buys some decorations, and a case of wine for Frances. Frances buys Malcolm a bicycle, and he rides it through the apartment while she and Small Frank watch. Frances tells Malcolm about when Franklin bought her a sailboat for Christmas, an attempt to repair their failing marriage. When Malcolm commends the effort, Frances replies that it would’ve been better if he’d stopped having sex with other women instead. After Malcolm goes to bed, Frances looks at the Christmas lights and remembers her own father, and how, when she first met Franklin, he had smelled just like him.

Malcolm rides his bicycle through Paris, and Frances is happy she was able to give him that experience. One morning he rides to Buttes-Chaumont, and upon reaching the summit, remembers being there with Susan. He hasn’t thought of Susan in the month he’s been gone, but now he misses her and decides to call.

While they are talking, Malcolm hears a male voice in Susan’s apartment and is shocked to find out that she is seeing Tom, her old fiancé, again. When she tells him that Tom proposed again, he invites her to visit him in Paris. She asks him not to call again, at least for a while.

Frances explains her two-part plan to Small Frank and that she intends to kill him, although, once again, this part of their conversation is concealed from the reader. Small Frank bites her hand and dashes out the apartment door as Malcolm comes in. Malcolm goes to the pharmacy for a first-aid kit and sees Small Frank in the park across the street, but the cat won’t come to him. The next day, Frances looks for hours but cannot find the cat. Malcolm calls Mme Reynard for advice, and she comes to the apartment. Frances remembers Madeleine and brings her up to Malcolm.

They explain Madeleine to Mme Reynard and how her powers seemed to evince a special connection with Small Frank. Then Frances tells Mme Reynard that Franklin’s spirit lives in Small Frank, and he ran away because he didn’t like something that Frances said. When she asks what it was, however, Frances won’t answer. Mme Reynard suggests hiring a private investigator to find Madeleine and is so excited she jumps up and hits her head on a lamp. Because Mme Reynard is bleeding profusely, they call her doctor to make a house call.

Mme Reynard’s doctor, Dr. Touche, brings a bottle of wine, but it is corked. He calls his wine merchant, who agrees to come over with a replacement. While they wait, Frances tells him about Small Frank being possessed by the spirit of her husband, but he doesn’t believe it.

The wine merchant Jean-Charles arrives and offers them a tasting. They tell him Small Frank has run away and that finding Madeleine is their main avenue to finding the cat. He mentions that his neighbor, Julius, is an investigator. He calls Julius, who comes over. They describe Madeleine to him, but without her surname, he won’t promise to find her. Frances pays his fee, and he leaves.

Julius regrets taking the job, fairly sure he won’t be able to find Madeleine. That night, he has a dream that he posts flyers and she responds; the next morning, he posts flyers, and two days later, Madeleine calls. He tells her that Frances and Malcolm want to hire her to find Small Frank, and they go to the apartment together.

Frances becomes a regular at a nearby café, where the staff admires her cool aloofness. She writes a postcard to Joan about how men in France urinate in public, and she, as a result, has seen a number of penises. She then describes the second part of her plan but decides not to send the postcard. After she leaves, the waiter, who doesn’t speak English, finds it on the table and mails it.

Mme Reynard secretly moves into their apartment while pretending to go home every night. Frances and Malcolm know this but find it interesting, and so say nothing. Frances begins wearing her robe all day, and although she knows that something is wrong, lacks the energy to change. She still has so much cash left that she flushes it down the toilet.

One morning, Mme Reynard draws their attention to the park outside the window. A new group of men have moved into the park, clashing with the men who currently live there. The two groups fight until the police arrive and attack them both. The men band together against the police. One man finds a billy club in the grass and approaches the police from behind, hitting them at the knees. They beat him until he is unconscious, then turn and advance on the group again.

There is a knock at the apartment door, but they are all too entranced by the action in the park to answer. Julius and Madeleine let themselves into the apartment.

Mme Reynard makes cocktails for everyone, and they decide to contact Small Frank that night. Frances tells them that the day she found Franklin dead, she had run upstairs to tell him she was going skiing, wondering, even as she did so, why she was bothering. Frank was dead, naked on his bed, and there was a cat on his chest, licking his face and making a keening noise. She chased the cat away, then sat with Franklin’s body before leaving. The car with her bags was waiting outside, so she went skiing, but didn’t speak to anyone all weekend. Every night she dreamed of Frank screaming at her, but she couldn’t hear him.

She assumed a staff member would find him over the weekend, but when she returned, he was still there. She called an ambulance, and after her story came out, was briefly arrested. The cat was waiting on the front steps when she got home, and she knew then that it was Franklin.

Small Frank, or Franklin Pierce, couldn’t face returning home after Frances told him of her plan. Instead, over the days that followed, he found temporary homes, but the more he looked like a stray, the less compassionate people were.

Franklin tried to die by suicide twice during his human life and now determines that death is the only answer. He climbs to the first platform of the Eiffel Tower, but when he jumps, his cat’s instincts take over, and he lands on his feet. After trying several times, Franklin realizes that he cannot overcome his animal survival instincts. He curls up to sleep under a merry-go-round but suddenly hears voices, and he feels compelled to speak to them.

They all sit around a table with a candle at the center. They hear Franklin’s voice as he responds to Madeleine. When Mme Reynard asks him ridiculous questions, he asks Frances to step in. Malcolm asks why Franklin ran away, and he suggests they ask Frances. When she doesn’t want to say, he tells them that Frances plans to kill him.

Franklin is convinced, after introductions, that everyone in the room is out to con Frances. She tells him that he owes it to her to come home, and when Franklin asks what Malcolm thinks of Frances wanting to kill him, Malcolm loses his temper. It is too late for Frank to ask what he thinks, as he’s never reached out to Malcolm before. He shatters his glass against the wall and leaves the room. Franklin asks what went wrong, and Frances tells him Malcolm hates him.

Mme Reynard asks what it is like to be a cat. Franklin finds it frustrating because he doesn’t have any power anymore, and he’d liked his life. Frances comments that he was angry when he was alive, and Frank claims he liked being angry. He points out that he got away with everything he did, and Frances points out that he’s still dead, and trapped in a cat’s body. Franklin stops communicating.

Frances and Malcolm go to the Natural History Museum. They split up, but Malcolm watches her, sitting alone in the café. He feels both love and fear but finally sits down across from her. When he says he is ready to go home to New York, Frances realizes he still doesn’t know the plan. She has 9,000 euros left and tries to figure out how to get rid of them.

On the way home, she sees the man who fought the police, sitting on a bench eating an orange from a sack full of them. She puts 7,000 euros in an envelope and takes it down to the man. He offers her an orange, peeling it and then giving it to her. He then asks for some of her oranges, and they share it. Afterward, the man only accepts 1,000 euros and suggests she give the rest to another man. He leaves, and she gives the money to the other man but is disappointed by how she feels when he leaves without saying goodbye.