In which Michelle Pfeiffer caresses our insides.
When a notorious Mafia clan is relocated to Normandy, France under the Witness Protection Program, hilarity—and violence—ensues. As unsung Michelle Pfeiffer pfilms go, Luc Besson’s 2013 dramedy The Family might be far from perfect, but’s is actually a lot of fun. Teaming Michelle with Robert De Niro is always a good bet—see also the beautiful comedy-fantasy Stardust (2007) and the excellent HBO drama The Wizard of Lies (2017). In The Family, Michelle seems to be having a bang-up time playing a hot mob wife for the second time in her career, after her magnificent turn as Angela de Marco in Married to the Mob (1988). She’s always had a great facility for dark comedies (hello, Dark Shadows), so The Family affords ample opportunity for her keen comic timing and wicked humor to shine.
The Manzoni Family isn’t your typical family—they’re a Mafia family in the witness protection program. Thing is, they keep doing Mafia-type, illegal stuff that keeps forcing the feds to move them to a new location before their covers are blown. Michelle’s matriarch Maggie has some of the best lines, and she delivers them perfectly, like the one about how olive oil “caresses your insides, leaving nothing behind but its scent,” or, when she whispers to a party guest, “You’re gonna take that silverware and put it where you found it, nice and easy, or else I’m gonna break both your arms.”
Not only is Maggie Manzoni one hell of a cook, she’s also a salty tongued mama bear who isn’t afraid to tell anyone, including her hubby, what’s what. Plus, like any good Mafia clan member, she doesn’t take kindly to a French shop owner spewing anti-American vitriol in front of her. What comes next is probably the film’s most memorable moment, as a sunglasses-sporting Maggie saunters out of the store just before it blows up behind her. She’s no joke, kids.
Maggie is one bad mother alright, and I love every second of Michelle’s delicious performance.
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