The Birdcage

The Birdcage (1996) is about a gay couple who run a nightclub in Miami meeting the family of their son's fiancée. Armand owns the club and Albert is its star; they have been together twenty years. Armand's son Val says he is getting married. The problem is the girl's father: a conservative senator who runs an organisation built on morality and is avoiding the press because his co-founder died in a scandal. Val proposes a plan: turn the flat into an ordinary family home for one evening, remove Albert, and present Armand as a diplomat. The paintings are swapped, the furniture is cleared and a crucifix goes up. Albert is devastated when he hears. Then he finds a solution and attends the dinner as Val's mother. The best thing about it is that what Albert performs is not an imitation but an act of acceptance; the scene starts as comedy and becomes a matter of pride. It is a remake of the 1978 French film La Cage aux Folles. Elaine May wrote the screenplay; she and Mike Nichols had performed improvised comedy together in the sixties, and this brought them back together on a film for the first time in decades. Robin Williams and Nathan Lane star. The casting is the reverse of what you expect: Lane is the flamboyant one and Williams the calm one. Gene Hackman plays the senator. Emmanuel Lubezki photographed it. It did very well commercially and drew attention as a mainstream comedy centred on a gay couple at that time. It runs 117 minutes. Good for: comedy, stage performance, and the nineties. Less good for: some jokes belong to their period and the first half is slow.