Review of The Closet (2001) by Jeff H — 14 Jun 2008

Francis Veber's loveable loser Francois Pignon returns in The Closet in the form of quintessential straight man Daniel Auteuil, who is perfect as the morbidly stiff, repressed office bore who decides to come out of the closet as a "flamer" in order to save his job. Veber wields the same wit and assured lightness of touch here that he did in The Dinner Game, Tais-Toi! and The Valet. This is also something decidedly more than just a simplistic "straight guy pretending to be gay" farce (a la say, some awful Footy Show sketch): the laughs are rooted in the characters and the absurd scrapes they get themselves into, the hilarious ironies, the comic misunderstandings, the P.G. Wodehouse breeziness of it all, rather than in cheap and easy digs at queens (there's not a single stereotypically camp gay man in it). There's also a neat and uplifting story arc about an ostensibly dull and broken man (despised, divorced, scorned by his only son) learning to embrace life and emerge from his own inner closet.

Veber is a comic master, and with Auteuil, Gerard Depardieu, Jean Rochefort and Michel Aumont all on board for the fun, the result is such joy, and such laughter.