Starring Robin Williams, this 1996 US remake of a 1970s French farce celebrated the joy of being gay in a way that was radical, writes Emily Maskell.

 

It's hard to resist the flamboyant opening of The Birdcage. As the camera swoops into a gaudy Miami nightclub and focuses on a collection of drag queens performing to the iconic Sister Sledge song We Are Family, it becomes clear that Mike Nichols' 1996 film is both a queer sanctuary and a comedic haven.

Released 25 years ago this week, Nichols' film, a remake of the 1978 French film La Cage aux Folles, about a gay couple hosting an ill-fated dinner party, remains remarkably relevant in its comedic sensibilities. On one level, The Birdcage was a universal, very mainstream comedy, that earned close to $200 million at the international box office. But within the context of mid-1990s Hollywood, the film was also a radical outlier that held particular significance for the LGBTQ+ community. As Dr Matthew Jones, Reader in Cinema Audiences and Reception at De Montfort University, puts it: "It helped an audience traumatised by a decade of living day-to-day with the threat of disease and death to laugh again."

Nichols' brazen film, one of the director's last before his career slowed in the 2000s, is in many ways a classic farce. The film revolves around Armand (Robin Williams) and Albert Goldman (Nathan Lane), the owners of a vibrant Florida drag nightclub, whose son, Val (Dan Futterman), is on a mission to get married. The catch: he wishes to marry the daughter of Ohio Senator Kevin Keeley (Gene Hackman), a prominent right-wing politician who certainly won't approve of the Goldmans' queer vocation or Albert's glamorous drag persona, Starina. Armand and Albert decide the solution is to surreptitiously act straight – with Albert in full drag to pass as Val's mother, 'Mother Coleman' – as they welcome the unknowing conservative family into their South Beach home for an evening of innuendo, irony and hilarity.

How it took on the culture war

What is particularly astute about the film's comedy is the way in which it mixes its farcical hijinks with a satirical intent, taking aim at both homophobia and the crisis of masculinity, as it navigates the infiltration of conservatism into a liberal space. The film makes Senator Keeley's political perspectives the butt of the joke, such as his vexation at Clinton's (qualified, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell") acceptance of "gays in the military" and belief that homosexuality is "weakening" the US. Acknowledging the particular 'culture war' climate of the US in the 1990s, when right-wing populist Pat Buchanan fomented opposition to the perceived social liberalism of the Clinton administration, The Birdcage ridicules the concern surrounding the depletion of so-called 'traditional values'. By the same token, it empowers its gay characters: they are in control of the reality into which the in-laws enter, and Armand and Albert are never characters that are laughed at, only with. - from source bbc.com