LA CAGE AUX FOLLES. (1978) DIRECTED BY EDOUARD MOLINARO. FROM THE PLAY BY JEAN POIRET. MUSIC BY ENNIO MORRICONE.
STARRING UGO TOGNAZZI, MICHEL SERRAULT, CLAIRE MAURIER, REMI LAURENT, BENNY LUKE, MICHEL GALABRU, CARMEN SCARPITTA, LUISA MANERI AND LIANI DEL BALZO.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
'Monsieur Baldi, exactly how many mothers does your son have...?'
I don't normally dictate to my readers, but if you don't positively adore this wonderful film, then you must have a swinging brick where your 'feels' department ought to be, lol. It's a flamboyant gay comedy, set in the fabulous St. Tropez, that sometimes descends into all-out farce, but it's not as light and throwaway as this description might seem to imply.
It's got a heart as big as all-outdoors and, at its core, it answers that tricky question of 'who's my family?' with the conclusion that your family is whoever is there for you through thick and thin, it's as simple as that. And it doesn't preach its little message, either. It delivers it beautifully and entertainingly with grace, panache, pathos and, um, bucketloads of sequins and glitter as well...
Renato Baldi is a middle-aged, gay businessman who owns a nightclub called LA CAGE AUX FOLLES. Although he wears make-up and dresses with flair, he can pass for straight when he needs to. He has a twenty-year-old son called Laurent, the result of dipping his toe into the pond of heterosexuality two decades ago with a woman who hasn't seen her son since he was born. They've done all right without her though and it doesn't look as if the wavy-haired Laurent, 'the little white master,' has ever wanted for anything.
Laurent was brought up by his father and his father's lover, Albin. Albin is the drag queen star of the nightclub show and he's flamboyantly gay and an absolute diva to boot. He's the 'woman' in the relationship to Renato's more low-key and stable male. He squeals and screeches when anything surprises him and he just lives for drama. If there's none around, he's quite happy to create his own, lol.
He minces to the store in a lime-green pantsuit teamed with strappy gold sandals and a jaunty little neck-scarf, for which type of thing he gets called 'a queer' a lot. He likes to bling up with lippy and jewellery and he couldn't play it 'straight' if his life depended on it.
But we're not annoyed by him at all, though, despite the temper tantrums and his frequent declarations to Renato that 'you don't love me!' Albin's got a huge heart and he loves Renato and Laurent, his little family, to the ends of the earth and back. What does a little lip-gloss and foundation matter amongst family?
Albin starts out being a tragi-comic, larger-than-life figure of fun but we soon realise that there's more to him than sling-backs and a collection of womens' wigs. He's a genuinely sensitive human being with feelings that can be hurt just like other peoples' can be hurt. He can be hurt terribly, in fact, by any suggestion that he's not good enough as he is, that his gayness or, more particularly maybe, his campness, makes him in some way inferior to other people.
Hilarious shenanigans ensue when the handsome heterosexual Laurent falls in love with a girl and decides to marry her. Andrea Charrier is a lovely sweet blonde girl, but her parents are ultra-conservative and her father is a big wheel in something called the Order of Morality, an organisation or political party that promotes the family above all else and abhors any deviations from the familial norm. Homosexuality and everything that that entails would probably be at the top of their hit-list.
Andrea is flatly unable to tell her parents that Laurent's parents are a couple of queens who own a gay nightclub and live over the shop in a fabulous apartment crammed with artistic- and blatant- tributes to male sexuality. Erect willies and taut buttocks everywhere you look, in other words. Not to mention Jacob, the gay black housekeeper who eschews the wearing of shoes and also, to be absolutely truthful, clothes.
Instead, she tells her stiff-necked, upper-class folks that Laurent's people are cultural attachés, involved in the arts and attached to an embassy. This thrills Andrea's parents, in particular her father, who's going through a bad time at the moment.
The President of their precious Order of Morality has just passed away suddenly in the arms of an underage prostitute. Oooopsies. So much for morality. The mortified Monsieur and Madame Charrier hope that a big white wedding between Andrea and the son of some big swanky cultural ambassador will take the paparazzis' filthy minds off of how their Chief popped his clogs.
A formal 'getting to know you' dinner is arranged between the Charriers and Laurent's 'parents,' to take place at Laurent's 'parents'' home. The race is on to completely heterosexualise both the apartment, which is clearly the home of a couple of flaming gays, and also to man up'Auntie' Albin to an acceptable. Anybody call for a miracle...?
The scene with Laurent's 'two Mothers' is hilarious. Ditto the scene with the 'Bonne Anniversaire' cake-parade and the one where the horrified Charriers have to be smuggled out of the building through the nightclub. Boy, are they getting their eyes opened for them in a big way tonight...!
But underneath all the farcical comings and goings, the love that holds the little family of three together is apparent. It'll take more than a snooty Minister for Morality and a mother who hasn't laid eyes on her son for twenty years to screw that up...
This is such a heartwarming and funny film. And it was super-successful commercially as well, having been turned into various stage productions and what-have-you even before it was ever a hit movie, a movie that straight people enjoy every bit as much as the gay community, by the way.
The play of LA CAGE AUX FOLLES ran for almost 1,800 performances from 1973-1978 at the Theatre du Palais-Royal in Paris. That's a heck of a lot of feathers and greasepaint, darlings. But it was worth it. There was also the American take on the story, THE BIRDCAGE in 1996 starring Nathan Lane and the late great Robin Williams.
LA CAGE AUX FOLLES is a terrific story with, as I said, a ton of heart-and-soul at its core. Albin is as fabulous a diva as any you'll have ever seen, the laughs are plentiful but the love even more so. Watch it. You'll adore it. And that's a promise, darlings...
LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, complete with some smashing extra features, is available to buy now from THE CRITERION COLLECTION.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment