The strange, sad death of
Gene Hackman somehow led me to re-watch a movie that is joyous and full of
life. The Birdcage, which pokes genial fun at intolerance of all kinds,
seemed a good antidote for an era in which being different is often considered
a crime. How ironic that a man who died alone, cut off by circumstance from his
loving helpmeet and his pets, is one of the stars of a film whose theme song is
Sister Sledge’s exuberant “We Are Family.”
La Cage aux Folles started out in 1973 as a popular French stage farce. Five years later it became a French-language film, sometimes billed internationally as Birds of a Feather, that racked up international fans and awards (including three Oscar nominations) and later gave rise to two sequels. By 1983 it had been transformed into an English-language stage musical with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman (Hello, Dolly!) and a book by the always madcap Harvey Fierstein. It took until 1996 for an English-language film to surface. The Birdcage, as it was called, marked the reunion of one-time comedy duo Mike Nichols and Elaine May. He directed and she wrote the saucy screenplay for an adaptation that changed the film’s setting from Saint-Tropez to Miami’s South Beach but maintained its lively, lovable spirit.
Hackman plays a U.S. Senator with impeccable Conservative credentials. A co-founder of something called The Coalition for Moral Order, he’s a big believer in mom, apple pie, and conventional sexuality. What he doesn’t know is that his daughter’s intended was raised in a household headed by two gay men. To make matters worse, when he and his agreeable wife (Dianne Wiest) head down to Florida for a meet-the-parents visit, the press is in hot pursuit, because his close political crony has just been caught in a deeply humiliating scandal. (Sex with an underage prostitute? Check. And does she happen to be African-American? Check.)
With all this going on, long-time partners Armand (Robin Williams) and Albert (Nathan Lane) are redoing their home décor to suggest to their visitors that the family couldn’t be more conventional, and that they have nothing at all to do with the drag club on the ground floor. Armand, who dresses well and has a neat little mustache, feels he can certainly carry off a masquerade as a straight man. Albert, though, is a bit of a problem. Flamboyant and emotional, he wants to be present for the young lad he considers his son, but there’s no good way to conceal his sexuality. This is the rare film in which the always-vivid Robin Williams steps aside and lets someone else take center stage. Broadway darling Nathan Lane returns the favor by presenting a master class in role-playing. As the glamorous Starina, he headlines the shows at the Birdcage, but remaking himself for the approval of Hackman’s U.S. Senator turns out to be a lot more of a challenge. There’s a priceless scene in which Armand coaches him to ramp up his machismo, à la John Wayne, but of course this proves impossible. After a lot of chaos, some of it involving young Val’s long-absent birth mother (Christine Baranski) and a grotesquely swishy houseboy (Hank Azaria), Albert saves the day by suddenly appearing—in a powder-pink suit and pearls—as Val’s actual mother, a genteel and sensible sort who quickly wins over Hackman’s politician, since they seem to share similar values.
It's then that the press descends, for a slam-bang conclusion in which the now-united couples work to save Hackman’s reputation as a leader of the moral majority. Fun!
