Susan Granger's review of "THE CLOSET" (Miramax Films)
In this hilarious French farce, a shy, boring accountant (Daniel Auteil) named Francois Pignon discovers he's going to be fired from his job at a condom factory. Lonely and distraught, he contemplates suicide. But then he runs into Belone (Michel Aumont), an elderly homosexual neighbor, who suggests a "sex discrimination" lawsuit to intimidate management. As evidence, Belone concocts provocative photographs of Pignon locked in a leather-clad embrace with another man and mails them anonymously to Pignon's boss. When the racy snapshots start circulating around the factory, not only does Pignon get his job back but he suddenly finds himself the focus of attention as an openly gay man. His lusty supervisor (Michele Laroque) is so intrigued that she wonders if, perhaps, she could change his sexual preferences. Even his ex-wife (Alexandra Vandernoot) and indifferent teenage son (Stanislas Crevillen) drop their disdain. But not everyone is enchanted. A mucho macho co-worker Felix (Gerard Depardieu), a self-righteous homophobe, is stunned and repulsed when he's forced by the PR director (Thierry Lhermite) to grovel and court Pignon's friendship or risk losing his own job. Writer/director Francis Verber artfully milks the farcical comedy as he dissects the hypocrisy of political correctness, veering off-track only occasionally into pedophilia. Daniel Auteuil ("The Widow of Saint-Pierre") is delightful - particularly with a blown-up condom perched on his head, riding on a float in a gay pride parade - and Gerard Depardieu delivers one of his most restrained, and effective, performances. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "The Closet" is a frankly sexual, adult 8. It's so clever, in fact, that Hollywood is already planning to re-make it in English, like "La Cage Aux Folles."
========== X-RAMR-ID: 28997 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 240303 X-RT-TitleID: 1108652 X-RT-SourceID: 742 X-RT-AuthorID: 1274 X-RT-RatingText: 8/10
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews