French Film - Le Placard

Le Placard (leh plah card) The Closet

The Closet (released in French-speaking countries as Le Placard) is a 2001 French comedy filmwritten and directed by Francis Veber. The screenplay focuses on an ordinary man whose life takes on surprisingly new dimensions when he pretends to be gay in order to keep his job.

François Pignon, an unassuming divorced man with a teenaged son who ignores him, quietly lives an unremarkable life. When he learns he is going to be fired from his job as an accountant in a rubber factory, he contemplates suicide, but his new neighbor Jean-Pierre Belone, a former industrial psychologist dissuades him from jumping from his balcony and suggests a way he might keep his position. He proposes he ignite the rumor he is homosexual by inserting his image in sexually provocative snapshots of a gay couple in a bar and anonymously mailing them to his boss. Given the factory's primary product is condoms, the gay community's support is essential, and his boss Mr. Kopel will be forced to keep Pignon on the payroll in order to be politically correct.

This is a very funny film, with also a very funny performance by Gerard Depardieu as the boss.