After
his smash-hit comedy, The Dinner Game, Veber returns with this
broadly funny, trenchant satire on political correctness in the corporate
world. François Pignon, a nondescript heterosexual milquetoast
accountant who has worked for a condom manufacturer for 20 years learns
that the company is planning to fire him. Coming after his rejection
at the hands of his wife, and the continual disdain of his teenage
son, this final affront leaves François contemplating suicide.
Fortunately, his new neighbor, Belone, takes him in hand and devises
a strategy to save his job: giving him a gay makeover. Knowing that
firing a gay man from a condom factory would be political suicide
for the firm, Belone cleverly doctors some photographs, pasting François’
head to the body of a leather-clad clubber in a gay bar, and faxes
the image to the firm’s offices where it circulates among the
entire staff. Not only is management compelled to keep François,
but they treat him with newfound respect, even giving him a promotion!
On top of that, everyone at work, as well as his wife and son, suddenly
see him in a new light. François does indeed “come out
of the closet”: as people learn to see him as someone “other,”
he emerges more confident, more virile, more “himself.”
|
|
| PHOTO Courtesy
of Miramax Zoë |
|
