All the Queen's Men (2001, Germany)

Hilarious Stefan Ruzowitzky comedy based on four soldiers ordered to get an Enigma code machine from a factory in Germany during World War 2. In a rather weak justification, they have to go disguised as women because German men are all at the front.

Played strictly for laughs (for the plot hardly holds up), the script contains some deliciously funny lines. The main characters are (left to right in the picture): James Cosmo (normally seen as a moustachioed Scotsman) playing Archie, the dim-witted administrator; David Birkin playing the intellectual introvert Johnno; Matt LeBlanc, who plays a brash, but flawed, American; and (not in this picture) Eddie Izzard is an openly bisexual transvestite.

The interplay between the characters is well scripted; here Tony, the out, and outrageous, character played by Eddie Izzard (right) is with the cerebral and cautious Johnno.

Johnno suffers from a need to use the lavatory frequently, and too often forgets to lower the seat after using the ladies'. Towards the end of the film, he nearly forgets once again, but remembers just in time; leaving the cubicle, however, he is confronted by a German officer at the urinal stall ... Johnno has been in a cubicle in the men's lavatory.

Johnno is played by David Birkin; his body language as a girl is so good that I wondered if he had any previous transgender "form" as it were ... but I haven't been able to trace anything.

The film is great fun.

HF May 2004

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