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A
STRAIGHT MAN SAVES HIS JOB BY TELLING CO-WORKERS HE IS GAY
 To
come out or not to come out. That is the question for many
gays and lesbians at work. The consequences could be no laughing
matter. Accordingly, Le Placard (The Closet)
is perhaps the most refreshingly therapeutic gay comedy released
in the twenty-first century. Directed by Francis Veber, who
gave us La Cage aux Folles (1978) about a gay
man trying to be straight, Le Placard focuses
on François Pignon (played by Daniel Auteuil), a nerdy straight
accountant who learns that he is about to be fired at a condom
manufacturing plant because he is so unobtrusively boring
that he will not be missed. Two years earlier, he received
another blow when his wife Christine (played by Alexandra
Vandernoot) and teenage son Franck (played by Stanislas Crevillen)
abandoned him. About to jump to his death from his apartment,
Belone (played by Michel Aumont), the new neighbor in the
next apartment, spots Pignon, discourages him from jumping,
and over coffee engages him in conversation about a way to
guarantee that he will not be fired. Belone, an industrial
psychologist who was fired twenty years earlier when his gay
sexual orientation was discovered, seeks personal retroactive
therapy by helping Pignon. The ploy is to get a rumor spread
at work that Pignon is gay. After using a computer to transfer
Pignon’s face into four gay bar snapshots, a packet is mailed
to his accountant coworkers, who in turn are expected to distribute
copies around the industrial plant. When the president of
the corporation, Kopel (played by Jean Rochefort), realizes
that firing a gay could produce a boycott of the trademarked
condom by gays all over Europe, Pignon’s job is secure. However,
Félix Santini (played by Gerard Depardieu), captain of the
company’s soccer team, is homophobic; he makes nasty remarks
about gays and thus about Pignon and thereby is a threat to
the tranquillity of the factory. Top management decides to
play a practical joke on Santini, by insisting that he befriend
Pignon. Accordingly, Santini must stop the homophobic expletives
and be nice to Pignon or lose his job. Thereafter, a hilarious
situation comedy develops, a farce rather than a documentation
of how far gays have gone in achieving equal treatment on
the job. The most notable subplot involves Pignon’s immediate
boss, Mlle. Bertrand (played by Michèle Laroque), who is suspicious
that the photos are fakes; after she tries to strip off his
shirt while he is sleeping off an overindulgence in alcohol
in order to see whether the tattoos in the photos match those
on his body, Pignon files a sexual harassment complaint, whereupon
she is slated to be fired.
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Pignon then saves her job by protesting to the corporation
president; toward the end of the film, after she spots a telltale
clue that the photo is old, the two have sex in full view
of visiting Japanese corporate executives. Meanwhile, Santini
buys Pignon a lunch and a pink sweater, the credit card receipts
of which infuriate his spouse; when she ultimately moves out,
he gets lonely, flies into a rage when he is turned down on
asking Pignon to move in with him, and ends up in a mental
institution. The most zany episode in the film occurs when
management insists that Pignon should ride on the company’s
float in Paris’ gay pride parade, and he is filmed live on
television wearing a large condom as a hat. On seeing him
on television, his son Franck is delighted to learn that his
father is not a nerd after all; he goes to visit his estranged
father, and the two smoke a joint together. When Pignon’s
wife protests that he is corrupting their son, Pignon finds
new brashness in telling her off. Having become a real man
by pretending to be gay, ex-nerd Pignon then marries Bertrand.
No synopsis can properly capture all the subplots, including
an unpleasant episode of gaybashing, but many issues raised
are extremely important for employees, gay or straight, for
which the Political Film Society has nominated The Closet
as best film of 2001 in the category human rights. First,
sexual orientation may not a matter than can be kept out of
the consciousness of coworkers nowadays; many workers are
quite curious about the sexuality of others, so those in the
closet may do a disservice to themselves and others. Indeed,
one benefit of coming out is that homophobes may show their
immaturity and thus unsuitability as employees when they tonguelash
gays and lesbians, thereby betraying their own latent homosexuality.
Employers, moreover, may now be more aware that gays are intelligent
consumers with enough economic power and psychological tenacity
to ruin a company by a boycott of its products. However, company
guidelines to assist employees or employers in dealing with
gays and lesbians, are often invented situationally rather
than professionally. From my own experience, homophobic coworkers
and closet bisexuals will not attend voluntary consciousness
raising workshops about the problems of gays, lesbians, and
the transgendered, so they must be required of all. MH
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