The Closet (2001)

Crappy film

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Just over eighty minutes in length, LE PLACARD manages to say more about entrenched attitudes towards sexuality and prejudice in the workplace than many weightier pieces.The plot is straightforward enough: François Pignon (Daniel Auteuil) is about to be made redundant from an accounting position at a rubber plant due to his essentially colorless personality. He encounters his next-door neighbor Belone (Michel Aumont), a retired industrial psychologist, who advises François to publicly announce his homosexuality, even though François is in truth heterosexual. The accountant's fortunes change immediately: fearful of the possible scandal involved, his boss reverses the redundancy decision and lionizes François instead. Homophobic personnel officer and rugby coach Félix (Gérard Depardieu) is forcibly told to cut down on the insults and be nice to François; in the end Félix falls in love with him. Félix's son Franck (Stanislas Crevillén), who once considered his father boring and refused to see him, now makes every effort to restore their relationship.While Francis Veber's comedy has a considerable degree of wish- fulfillment about it, the director nonetheless makes some sharp points about the ways in which people judge purely on appearances. François's co-workers Mlle. Bertrand (Michèle Laroque) and Christine (Alexandra Vandernoot) immediately assume that they understood his sexuality all along through his "tight-assed" manner of walking. Félix's two rugby-playing buddies beat François up in a garage, suspecting him of pedophile tendencies. Meanwhile Kopel, François's boss (Jean Rochefort) automatically assumes that François will participate in a Gay Pride march, because "that's what you people do."The film also criticizes other gender assumptions - for example, that rugby players are all aggressively macho with homophobic impulses. The grunt and grind of the scrum inevitably prevents them from being gay themselves. Likewise François proves to be a better father when he pretends to be gay, compared to his heterosexual past, which says a lot about society's assumptions about what a "true" parent should do.Such points are made in a light-hearted manner, with a script that positively sparkles with one-liners. Depardieu is especially droll as the rugby-playing dope who discovers his homosexual tendencies and learns how to live with them, even if it takes a spell in a psychological unit for him to do so.

I liked this movie a lot. I like to say European movies often add 15 IQ points to American formulas--but this one adds about 20. There is just so much more depth to the good ones.The main character plays a Sad Sack Jack Lemon loser type who there is really nothing wrong with except he is boring and doesn't know how to play office politics. He is going to be laid off. Drowning in the failure of his marriage (and an estranged son among many other things) and now this happens! His attempt to jump from a building is thwarted by a neighbor who shows him how to turn the tables at work. Use of the kittens was great and a zillion other refinements Hollywood usually misses. It all comes to good writing and at a minimum competent directing. All else can be undone by bad scripts just tried to watch Meryl Streep! and Jack Nicholson in Heartburn---don't! What a waste of acting talent.This is good solid entertainment. How do you take PC office politics and especially the whole Gay thing and make a solid comedy that feels good---This one does it very very well.Depardieu looks good in this film he needs to limit the booze a little. Poor man. He is at his best here. Love him.RECOMMEND

"It's the eyes of the beholder". Yes, sure, but does it matter? François Pignon seems to be able to do nothing well in life. Until, by an accident of fate, and a bright neighbour, formerly an enterprise psychologist, they find out how to avoid the bad news, get to know who's who in his family and work colleagues, and get the reins of his own life, which seemed to be a robot's.Michel Aumont is a fantastic actor, so natural it makes you tremble. Without him, the film just wouldn't exist. Yes, Auteuil is also fine as a likable looser. When he "squints like a gay", he really does something ... unusual. Like on a Rorschach test, it just takes an ambiguous image for us viewers to project who we really are. The envious co worker, the racist macho, the brainy one who plays with other people's feelings like if they were chess pieces, the bright beautiful competitive blonde which rightly suspects from the start, the boss who wields power but just doesn't want trouble, the bright African who also has mixed feelings about the white majority, his stunning but sour & selfish ex wife, their aloof frivolous teenager, in short, the human comedy. Balzac would be proud.Pignon, like his neighbour's kitten, is probably too grey to be distinguishable from most people we know. If there's something reassuring in this comedy that takes place at a fake condom factory is that we could all change. If only ...Veber, director of "The dinner game" and of lesser works, is at his best here. While stereotypes abound, they are probably forced upon us to make the "clockwork orange" of gags work relentlessly. At that it succeeds admirably.Pure enjoyment!PS: Kudos to the nicest kittens I've seen on a film :).

This is a film with one laugh holding it up: a straight man pretending to be gay. So, the film is not that funny to justify all its other problems and the plot ends up repeating the very homophobia that it allegedly seeks to decry. The clichés of gay men in cinema are numerous and Auteuil's interpretation of the camp gay man is just boring and problematic. Sure the actors are great, but this does not a good film make. What is troubling about films like this (ie. _Bird Cage_, _In and Out_, etc) are that they set up a premise of homosexuality between two men, place straight male actors in the role as if to show their "versatility" and "ability to play gay" (whatever this means?) and ultimately the intention of the film reifies gay identity as fixed, parodic and almost always funny. The comedy vehicle tends to sublate the seriousness of homophobia which goes far beyond the light, comic scenes here and ends up being a "feel good movie" for straight audiences around the world. Indeed comedy about gay men and women is possible, but it must be done with a sense of the community about which it deals, and this film is void of any real references to homosexuality that are not based on slap-stick humor and cliché. Essentially, this film is rather offensive in that all sexuality is in word only, no visible affection between men and ultimately this reads as homophobic when the film itself self-censures in not exposing the audience to what is the only expression of any sexuality: sex or any type of physical demonstration of affection. We are left with a film full of references to gay men, no demonstration of any form of homosexuality, and a humour built entirely around this imaginary sexuality that, were it shown in any kind of real way, would have turned off many of the members of the audience from writing reviews like "one of the best films about this subject". It is easy to like "this subject" when you don't ever have to see it or honestly engage it outside of parody.