La Cage Aux Folles II

1980 Director Edouard Molinaro

Renato and Albin, the internationally popular gay couple from La Cage Aux Folles, return in this sequel directed by Edouard Molinaro.

In a move to make his partner jealous, the flamboyant Albin waits in a local café, in full drag, hoping to be picked up.  But Alvin gets more than he bargains for when the fly he catches in his web is actually a spy who uses him as an unwitting courier for a secret microfilm. Now on the run from ruthless agents, Albin and Renato flee to Italy where they attempt to hide out on a family farm, with Alvin posing as Renato's wife. Once there, Albin becomes an object of lust for a group of lonely farmhands.

Unlike most sequels, this film not only keeps the format of the first but also allows the characters room to expand and show new facets of themselves. The plot is farcical but the delivery is deadpan and the result is very funny. Albin's confusion at having to be a man dressed up as a woman pretending to be a man is hilarious. A very good sequel to a ground breaking film.

La Cage Aux Folles

1978 Director Edouard Molinaro

Oddly, this was one of the most successful foreign films ever shown in the U.S. A comedy based on a French stage play, La Cage aux Folles depicts the farcical chaos that results when a gay man attempts to play it straight.

Young Laurent returns to St. Tropez bearing the news that he has found the girl of his dreams and they are engaged.  What's more, she and her family are on their way over for dinner at his father's home to meet the in-laws-to-be.  This traditional meeting of families seems typical, but because this ultraconservative family will be expecting to meet Father and wife, they'll never be prepared for the shock of meeting Renato and his flamboyant, campy, outrageous lover and drag-queen, Albin.  So in a great effort to please his son, Renato asks Albin for the performance of a lifetime. Thus setting up an unforgettable evening that is charged and ready to detonate an explosion of zaniness and absurdity.

La Cage aux Folles' pleasant, nonthreatening comic sensibility attracted a large mainstream audience in both Europe and the United States, which was at the time unusual for a film with a homosexual theme. Indeed, the film was popular enough to inspire two remakes: a stage musical and, nearly two decades later, the hilarious Hollywood comedy The Birdcage with Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, and Gene Hackman.