La Cage aux Folles [DVD] [1978]

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Edouard Molinaro directs this Franco-Italian comedy farce starring Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault. sexual couple Renato and Albin (Tognazzi and Serrault) are, respectively, manager and star drag attraction of the Saint-Tropez nightclub. For years they have kept up an illusion that they are husband and wife to protect their son Laurent (Remi Laurent) from potential persecution. However, when Laurent brings home his fiancée Andrea (Luisi Maneri) to meet his parents, the charade that they are husband and wife takes a more complicated turn, especially when Andrea brings along her conservative parents Louise and Simon (Carmen pitta and Michel Galabru) and Laurent's birth mother shows up at the club. From .co.uk ----------- In the French farce La Cage aux Folles, Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault star as Renato and Albin, a middle-aged gay couple and co-owners of a nightclub, the titular Cage aux Folles, where hysterically effeminate Albin stars as drag act Zaza. The long-suffering Renato once briefly enjoyed a heterosexual relationship and has a 20-year-old son, Laurent. When the latter turns up one day and announces he is to marry the daughter of one M Charrier, deputy leader of the Moral Order party, Renato is initially appalled. However, he comes round and reluctantly agrees to a meeting with the girl's parents, in which he will pose as a high-ranking diplomat, rid the apartment of all its queenly trappings and try to persuade Albin to lie low. The final 20 minutes of the movie, in which this charade of austerity and propriety falls entirely to pieces are among the most aisle-rollingly uproarious ever committed to celluloid. It was remade by Hollywood as The Birdcage, but this original is far funnier. Although perhaps a little dated and stereotypical in its depiction of gay life there is real sympathy for, and affection conveyed between, Renato and Albin. The scenes with the Charrier family, who, it turns out, have problems of their own, cut an utterly gloomy bourgeois contrast with the screaming flamboyance of the nightclub scenes. The Charrier's unscrupulous chauffeur is one of the film's many treasures, his final "Combien?" provoking the film's crowning guffaw. All this iced with a delicious soundtrack from Ennio Morricone which wafts with the nostalgic scent of late-1970s South of France. On the DVD: La Cage aux Folles is unfortunately presented in a not terribly good 1:66:1 transfer: much of the crackle and faded colours of the original remain, while the soundtrack is fuzzy in places. The only extra is the original trailer. --David Stubbs