- Le Placard (The Closet)
5/17/20 (Sun), Tokyo
With bars (and shops and restaurants and theaters and on and on) shut down now by the coronavirus pandemic for far too long, I was worried about a friend who runs a drinking spot in downtown Tokyo. So I suggested hosting a movie night on the big screen in his bar just for his regular customers. He liked the idea and chose this film, figuring that a light comedy would be a safe bet for the trial run. I didn’t recognize the choice at first because of the bland Japanese title メルシィ人生！(“Merci, Life!”), which could apply to hundreds of films. If they couldn’t find an equivalent to The Closet (an exact translation of the French title), surely there was a more interesting alternative out there. Some in the bar speculated that the distributors may not have wanted to emphasize the gay part when the movie debuted in 2001, but this is not, after all, a gay film – the gay angle is played for laughs if anything. I wonder if their obtuseness actually hurt the film’s commercial appeal. In any case, after weeks of watching movies at home, I really enjoyed being with a group of people laughing at the same film. I’m ready to get back to the movie theaters, and I suspect I’m not alone.
sekenbanashi 