Summary
In Nice, the flamboyant impresario Renato still manages the popular night club La Cage
aux folles with his transvestite partner Albin. When Renato suggests he is too
old to impersonate Marlene Dietrich for his stage act, Albin goes off in a huff and intends
to prove he is still attractive to other men. To his surprise, Albin soon
finds himself being dragged off to a hotel room by a strange young man, unaware that armed
secret agents are hot on their heels. When Albin’s abductor is suddenly killed,
Renato and Albin realise that they are in great danger. Sure enough it is not long
before they are caught up in deadly game of counter-espionage involving a vital piece
of micro-film. To make matters worse, Albin ends up having to meet Renato’s mother...
Review
The huge international success of the original film adaptation of Jean Poiret’s play La
Cage aux folles in 1978 inevitably led to a sequel being made soon after. Whilst
lacking the freshness and camp unpredictability of the first film, La Cages aux folles
II is nonetheless an entertaining comic romp, featuring a few outrageously funny comic
set pieces and some very witty dialogue.
Whilst the first Cages aux folles film was concerned mainly with sending up contemporary
attitudes to gay lifestyles, the sequel, disappointingly, is more preoccupied with parodying
the film policier (the French crime-thriller). As a result, this later film
is less appealing than the first (comic parodies of this type being two-a-penny in French
cinema at that time) and the plot is really no more than second rate bande dessinée
which soon runs out of steam.
As in the first film, it is Michel Serrault’s unashamedly camp performance as the cross-dressing,
hyper-neurotic Albin which saves the day and keeps the audience laughing, long after the
jokes in the script have dried up. Unfortunately, within a decade of the film's
release, this depiction of an overtly gay character had become hopelessly dated and, for
many people, a tad offensive.
© James Travers 2002
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