British comedy sees the workplace as a sexual microcosm – see Are You Being Served or "The Office". French comedy tends to frame the workplace as a slapstick showcase for all that’s wrong with urban change. Jacques Tati’s Traffic made great fun out of the shortcomings of the capitalistic middle class, immigration and technology, and The Closet (Le Placard) pokes fun at political correctness and the reductive, ill-thought out “cool” of gay.

Daniel Auteuil plays François, an invisible worry-wart ignored by his ex-wife, son, and everyone he works with. When he hears that he’s about to be laid off, he circulates the rumour that he’s gay knowing that his bosses won’t sack him and risk a backlash from gay groups and the media. Things get out of hand once macho Félix (Gérard Depardieu), who’s been warned to be especially nice to François, starts to lay it on too thick with his meek colleague, taking him out on dates and buying him a pink cashmere sweater as a birthday gift.

Meanwhile, François’ son thinks it’s cool to have a gay dad, as he can smoke pot, drink and stay up late whenever he visits, or so he thinks, and François’ ex-wife wants to rewrite their divorce settlement now that she knows the “truth” of their failed marriage.

Everyone wears a mask of tolerance that slips the second François’ back is turned. The two women he shares his office with are especially vicious, and no one seems at all interested in François beyond pressing the right buttons to avoid censure from the boss. Specious sexual harassment claims and workers compensation are part of the film’s light critique of the litigious and tentative environment of the modern workplace.

The Closet is a funny and clever film that nails our new-found abilities to pay convincing lip service to any idea if we’re told we have to in order to keep our jobs. Who hasn’t bit their lip at work to avoid getting served with some kind of caution? The film is a great farce, and its mistaken-identity set-up generates one hilarious scene after another. Auteuil and Depardieu give strong performaces, and it’s refreshing to see the latter out of period costume and heavy drama for a change, as he’s a most charming lunky lead man.

One weak note is the next-door neighbour character, played by Michel Aumont. An older gay man who spends a lot of time carrying around an insolent stray cat, he’s the one who cooks up the fake-gay plan for François, and his reflection on his own dismissal, decades ago, for being gay, is an annoyingly pat and sentimental lapse. Given the fun the film has with how “gay” has devolved into an easily fake-able, easily exploitable identity that is stuck in a censorious world of wordplay and procedure, this note of gay pride seems facile and quite out of place.

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