Pédale Douce (1996, France)

An intelligent film about a gay businessman, Adrien (Patrick Timsit). He has to pretend to be straight, to his boss, a stuffy Merchant Banker. There are a lot of overtones of La Cage aux Folles in this, but it's much funnier and less shrill.

He has a female confidante, who runs a restaurant with a gay clientele, and she poses as his wife, but the boss is physically attracted to her, and complications multiply. There are some really funny lines in the interplay between them. Later in the film, the boss is trying to find out what is going on and visits a gay club. His wife finds out and there is a hilarious dialogue between them as she explores what she presumes is his gay side, and he is agonising about the horrors of what he has just seen.

There isn't much cross-dressing until the last quarter of the film, when various permutations are seen.

The film has been released in an English version, What a Drag.

HF August 2002

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