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The Closet

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To be sure, Francis Verber has talent. With the wildly funny "Dinner Game", he showed that he was able to weave hilarious situational comedy. Unfortunately, "The Closet" does not pick up where "The Dinner Game" left off. There's nothing awful about it, but in a failed attempt to put a new spin on Verber's creation Francois Pignon, "The Closet" never delivers.

Francois Pignon (Daniel Auteuil) is considered an idiot by many who work with him at a condom factory and is on the verge of being fired. He gets word of this, and dismayed turns to his new neighbor Belone (Michel Aumont). Belone suggests a tricky scheme to save Pignon's job: pretend that he is gay and the company will never fire him if they want to save their image. The scheme is working, and on the other side of the spectrum there is another prank being played. Homophobe Felix Santini (Gerard Depardieu) is being pressured to act nice to Pignon to save his job, and unexpected things begin to happen.

Francois Pignon is one of the funnier characters I have encountered in recent years. In Verber's previous film he was a flat-out idiot, meaning well but always saying the wrong things and the wrong times. In "The Closet", everyone calls him an idiot, but I don't buy it. He seems perfectly intelligent to me. Pignon is translated here as a boring punch line without the setup. Much to my surprise, I found that I couldn't care less what happens to him over the course of the film. One of the most valuable pieces of advice I could give to Verber from an audience member's perspective is: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Only partly because of Pignon's shortcomings does the film fall flat. Most of the jokes just aren't funny. They're the same sort of recycled gay jokes we get all the time in movies. The screenplay feels worn and tired, and what could've been a breath of fresh air becomes recycled and stale. Verber is merely taking an interesting idea and presenting the obvious "What-ifs" that immediately pop into one's mind when hearing a synopsis about the film.

The acting was incredibly sub-par as well. Daniel Auteuil, who is on the whole a very good actor gives a performance as monotone and boring as Pignon is (see him in "The Widow of Saint-Pierre" if you really want to see what he's made of). Gerard Depardieu is fair, but doesn't show enough desperation that we are told Felix so obviously has. Michele Laroque breathes a little more life into her character Mlle Bertrand, Pignon's secretary; she is the highlight of an ensemble that is relatively uninteresting and never shows enough range.

"The Closet" is a wasted opportunity. In situational comedy, we need to care about or at least understand the characters to a certain extent or it will be impossible to laugh when they get into trouble. While Verber seemed like he could handle that, in "The Closet" it doesn't seem he believes in his characters; as if he believes that the audience need only take them at face value. Unfortunately, "The Closet" ranks as one of the most disappointing ventures of the year.

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY FRANCIS VERBER




CAST:


Daniel Auteuil .... Franois Pignon
Grard Depardieu .... Flix Santini
Thierry Lhermitte .... Guillaume
Michle Laroque .... Mlle Bertrand
Michel Aumont .... Belone, the neighbour
Jean Rochefort .... Kopel, the director
Alexandra Vandernoot .... Christine
Stanislas Crevilln .... Franck
Edgar Givry .... Mathieu
Thierry Ashanti .... Victor
Armelle Deutsch .... Ariane
Irina Ninova .... Martine
Marianne Groves .... Suzanne
Michle Garcia .... Madame Santini
Luq Hamet .... Moreau

Running Time: 84 minutes



"The Closet" is rated R for a scene of sexuality.

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