Francis Veber was a screenwriter on the classic French farce La Cage aux Folles, which is quite a pedigree for a director mounting a new gay comedy. Unfortunately, his new film, The Closet, ranks with La Cage's American counterpart, The Birdcage, and even then just barely. (Then again, the question arises: Do we really need another French gay farce at all? The answer is probably not.)

The story goes like this: An accountant at a condom factory realizes he's about to be fired. Divorced, alienated from his 17-year-old son, he contemplates suicide, but is instead given some rather odd advice from his neighbor, a retired psychiatrist: Announce that you are gay at work, and the powers that be will be too frightened to fire you, lest they get slapped with a nasty lawsuit. The accountant takes his neighbor's advice, and, well, hilarity ensues. Or, if not hilarity, at least a few laughs here and there. Actually, how well you like The Closet may in fact depend on just how high Three's Company ranks on your laugh-o-meter. If the answer is 10, then by all means, rush out and see it. If, on the other hand, the number is five (or four, or three), you might want to stay home.

Still, the film is not without merits (Gérard Depardieu, as a homophobic co-worker, leaps to mind), but the end result, much like Veber's previous SIFF hit, The Dinner Game, is rather unsatisfactory. Farce is all about misconceptions and misunderstandings (and, in its weakest form, people popping in and out of closets), not to mention the awkwardness that often follows being polite. La Cage aux Folles was a perfect example; The Closet is not. Sitting there, dulled by the film's allegedly wacky comedic stylings, I kept expecting Jack Tripper to appear and tumble over the couch. Unfortunately, he never arrived.