THE CLOSET aka LE PLACARD
Year: 2001
USA: Miramax
UK: Optimum Releasing
Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Gerard Depardieu, Thierry Lhermitte, Michele Laroque, Michel Aumont, Jean Rochefort, Alexandra Vandernoot, Stanislas Crevillen, Edgar Givry, Thierry Ashanti, Armelle Deutsch, Irina Ninova, Marianne Groves, Michele Garcia, Luq Hamet
Director: Francis Veber
Country: France
Language: French (English subtitles)
USA & UK: 84 mins
USA Rated: R for a scene of sexuality
UK Certificate: 15 contains moderate sexual references
USA Release Date: 29 June 2001 (Limited Release - New York and San Francisco)
UK Release Date: 17 May 2002
Synopsis
Francois Pignon (Daniel Auteuil), an accountant and in his forties, has worked for the same contraceptive manufacturer for a number of years. He becomes suicidal when he learns that his company is downsizing and he is about to lose his job. Work means everything to this gloomy, boring little man, even more so since both his ex-wife, who left him after two years of marriage, and their 16-year-old son avoid him. However things are about to change when Pignon's psychologist neighbour persuades him that he can save his job by coming out to his employers as a gay man -- even though he isn't!