...what makes it all work so well is that its characters are both engaging and endearing.
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Yes, "La Cage aux Folles" is funny and poignant and charming and even a touch satirical, but I think what makes it all work so well is that its characters are both engaging and endearing. In this regard, the 1978 French farce has the unique advantage of appealing to gays and straights alike, making it one of America´s biggest-grossing foreign imports of all time. Its appearance on DVD is surely welcome, even if its audiovisual qualities leave something to be desired.
Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault star as a middle-aged gay couple, Renato and Albin, living in Saint-Tropez, the beach resort on the French Riviera. They are co-owners of a night spot called La Cage aux Folles that features female impersonators and transvestites, Renato managing the club and Albin starring in the revue as Zaza. They´ve been together for twenty years and bicker and fight and carry on as most couples will, Albin the more feminine, flamboyant, and temperamental of the two, continually jealous and given to sudden and uncontrollable shrieks.
When the story begins Albin is convinced, as he is every day, that Renato doesn´t love him anymore. Renato plays an audio tape for Albin of the same tantrum he threw the night before. Perhaps in deference to straight audiences, the pair are never shown engaging in any type of physical intimacy, yet their looks, glances, and general demeanor toward one another show their mutual affection and devotion. It is a moving relationship played subtly yet vividly by two accomplished actors.
The major conflict in the movie occurs when we learn that Renato, in a drunken mood swing many years earlier, had an affair with a woman, the result being a son, Laurent (played, coincidentally by an actor named Remi Laurent), whom the mother abandoned and Renato and Albin raised. Now, the son is getting married to a young woman named Andrea (Luisa Maneri) and wants to introduce his fiancee´s parents to his own parents. The trouble is that her parents are uptight, puritanical prudes who would never countenance Renato and Albin´s lifestyle. The girl´s father, M. Charrier (Michel Galabru), is the Secretary General of the country´s ruling party, the Union for Moral Order, and the mother, Madame Charrier (Carmen Carpitta), is a rigid ice cube. To save grace, the girl has told her parents that Laurent´s father is a cultural attaché. This comes in handy for the girl´s parents when the President of the Moral Order Party is found dead in the arms of a teenage prostitute; they figure their daughter´s marriage to a diplomat will salvage some of their reputation.
Naturally, Renato and Albin must disguise themselves as the most straightlaced couple possible in order to fool the young lady´s folks, and therein lies the bulk of the laughs. But thanks to the deft guidance of director Edouard Molinaro, neither character is made to seem ridiculous or the butt of any jokes, despite Albin´s penchant for wildly effeminate clothing. The funniest scenes occur when Renato tries to teach Albin to be more masculine to impress the girl´s mother and father. "Hold the toast in a manly way!" exclaims Renato, and then he shows Albin how to walk like John Wayne. This scene is doubly memorable if you recognize Tognazzi as for a long time one of Italy´s leading "tough guy" actors.
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