As Laurence Senelick, a Professor of Drama and Oratory at Tufts University, explained in an interview for the film's Criterion Collection DVD release, La Cage aux Folles was a glimpse into "a world had no concept of whatsoever". However, the contexts in which these films were released gave them very different resonances: itself adapted from a 1973 play, Edouard Molinaro's original film came to the screen in the pre-Aids, gay liberation era of the 1970s, though it was also widely regarded as ahead of its time.
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Elaine May's screenplay replicates almost every single comic beat of the French film, from using John Wayne as a case study for how to walk like a man to Armand and Albert serving the in-laws their meal in sexually explicit patterned bowls.
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With the remake's switch from 1970s Saint Tropez to 1990s Miami, it's interesting to reflect on The Birdcage's relationship with the original La Cage aux Folles. What is so striking, however, is the film's ability to navigate such topics with comedic ease and radiant humour. Rather it is Keeley's dysfunctional attempt to maintain a rigid public image that is laughable. What's more, The Birdcage presents Albert's acts of performativity and transformation as empowering rather than scandalous. Sometimes even within ourselves," reflected writer Manuel Betancourt in a 2019 essay revisiting his relationship to the film. "The Birdcage encourages us all to be more like Albert, to see in his gay femininity a kind of strength we all too often mock and disparage. It's a lesson that pokes fun at an act that both characters know to be inherently ridiculous – for Albert, the performance of masculinity becomes just another facet of drag. In one particularly memorable scene, after Albert initially decides to disguise himself as Val's uncle, Armand attempts to teach Albert the 'ways' of the straight man. By the same token, it empowers its gay characters: they are in control of the reality into which the in-laws enter, and Armand and Albert are never characters that are laughed at, only with. Acknowledging the particular 'culture war' climate of the US in the 1990s, when right-wing populist Pat Buchanan fomented opposition to the perceived social liberalism of the Clinton administration, The Birdcage ridicules the concern surrounding the depletion of so-called 'traditional values'. The film makes Senator Keeley's political perspectives the butt of the joke, such as his vexation at Clinton's (qualified, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell") acceptance of "gays in the military" and belief that homosexuality is "weakening" the US. What is particularly astute about the film's comedy is the way in which it mixes its farcical hijinks with a satirical intent, taking aim at both homophobia and the crisis of masculinity, as it navigates the infiltration of conservatism into a liberal space.
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Armand and Albert decide the solution is to surreptitiously act straight – with Albert in full drag to pass as Val's mother, 'Mother Coleman' – as they welcome the unknowing conservative family into their South Beach home for an evening of innuendo, irony and hilarity. The catch: he wishes to marry the daughter of Ohio Senator Kevin Keeley (Gene Hackman), a prominent right-wing politician who certainly won't approve of the Goldmans' queer vocation or Albert's glamorous drag persona, Starina. The film revolves around Armand (Robin Williams) and Albert Goldman (Nathan Lane), the owners of a vibrant Florida drag nightclub, whose son, Val (Dan Futterman), is on a mission to get married. Nichols' brazen film, one of the director's last before his career slowed in the 2000s, is in many ways a classic farce.
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As Dr Matthew Jones, Reader in Cinema Audiences and Reception at De Montfort University, puts it: "It helped an audience traumatised by a decade of living day-to-day with the threat of disease and death to laugh again." But within the context of mid-1990s Hollywood, the film was also a radical outlier that held particular significance for the LGBTQ+ community.
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On one level, The Birdcage was a universal, very mainstream comedy, that earned close to $200 million at the international box office. Released 25 years ago this week, Nichols' film, a remake of the 1978 French film La Cage aux Folles, about a gay couple hosting an ill-fated dinner party, remains remarkably relevant in its comedic sensibilities. – Why Coming to America was revolutionary As the camera swoops into a gaudy Miami nightclub and focuses on a collection of drag queens performing to the iconic Sister Sledge song We Are Family, it becomes clear that Mike Nichols' 1996 film is both a queer sanctuary and a comedic haven.
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It's hard to resist the flamboyant opening of The Birdcage.