The Closet

Much like The Dinner Game (Le Dîner de cons), The Closet is a film which is extremely clever and wonderfully written, but rarely made me laugh.

This is what I consider to be a traditional French comedy – misunderstanding followed by misunderstanding. Daniel Auteuil is great, and you feel sorry for his character almost as soon as the film begins. Depardieu has a great turn as a blundering homophobe, and thankfully his character arc doesn’t go down too predictable a path. The look of the film bothered me a bit. The sets look slightly too fake, the costumes slightly over the top. But then again everybody and everything is made to look a little silly, so maybe this is on purpose.

The Closet is all about the assumptions made about sexuality. In putting the main character of Pignon in an unfamiliar position, it shows how ridiculous the straight world can be when put in close confines to something unfamiliar. It points out the hypocrisy and double standards, although at one point when one of the ‘macho’ hetero guys talks about a film he saw on television, this seems a little too much.

The Closet takes an offbeat look at what comprises ‘being a man’ in the twenty first century. It is a charming film with a great cast of characters that never fails to entertain.