Poltergay is a 2006 French supernatural comedy directed by Éric Lavaine.
Marc (Clovis Cornillac) and Emma (Julie Depardieu) are a married couple who inherit a house that's uninhabited for nearly 30 years. What they don't know is that the house's basement was a gay nightclub in The '70s, L'Ambigu. An explosion destroyed the club in 1979 in the middle of a foam party, and five partygoers perished. The spirits of the five men still haunt the house as ghosts, and the only way they know how: as party animals. Only Marc can see them, and the visions he has progressively drive Emma to leave him, thinking he's crazy.
Poltergay provides examples of the following tropes:
- Affectionate Nickname: When he was alive, Jean-Guy was nicknamed "Salopette" and he nicknamed his lover "Nounoune".
- The Atoner: The five ghosts realize their mischievous antics have ruined Marc's life by driving Emma away, and they spend the final act of the film helping Marc win her heart back.
- Babies Ever After: Emma is pregnant from Marc at the end.
- The Cameo: Gay singer Dave
(As Himself) goes at Marc's nightclub at the end, and it turns out he can see the ghosts, somehow. - Camp Gay: Four out of the five gay ghosts have various degrees of effeminate manners and the expected '70s outfits to go with it. Ivan is practically a Crossdresser.
- Closet Gay: Any man who can't see the ghosts has had gay sex at least once in his life, including people Marc thought were straight such as his Best Friend.
- Coitus Uninterruptus: By the end, Marc has sex with Emma without caring that the five ghosts are watching.
- Convenient Photograph: It turns out the five ghosts can be filmed or photographed, which is how Emma learns the truth about them (she thought Marc was crazy before and realizes he was not). She uses a camera to see them afterwards.
- Cover Version: In the end credits, Julie Depardieu sings a non-disco cover of Patrick Hernandez's "Born to Be Alive".
- Disco:
- The music genre that played in the club in The '70s, obviously. The ghosts also have it play in present-day (they's particularly fond of Boney M.'s "Rasputin", and have music by Sheila Black Devotion play as well), although only Marc can hear it. They also dress like the Village People at one point.
- Subverted with Julie Depardieu's Cover Version of "Born to Be Alive" at the end. The song is originally disco but this cover is not.
- Eating the Eye Candy: One of the gay ghosts looks at Marc's butt and lets a Wolf Whistle out. Then, when Marc takes a shower, one of them can't resist using Marc's own Polaroid camera to take a picture of his naked butt. Later, two of them watch Marc having sex with Emma and compliment him on his butt and muscles.
- Elvis Impersonator: The ghost Jean-Guy "Salopette" wears a white late '70s Elvis-like suit.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: For nearly 30 years, the five ghosts have been trapped in the house, not knowing how time had past. Until they watched the TV and magazines that Marc brought in 2006, trying to catch up.
- Friendly Ghost:
- The five ghosts are spirits of party animals who got trapped in the house where their living selves perished in 1979. They can be quite mischievous, but at some point they realize how their wacky antics have damaged the life of Marc, and they set out to help him win his wife's heart back and befriend him.
- Gilles is the nicest of the five ghosts overall, including towards Marc, and he makes it clear to the latter that he's not into the others' mischievous pranks.
- Gag Penis: The five ghosts like to draw a stylized penis with wings in various places, which annoys Marc.
- Gayborhood: Marc brings the five ghosts to the district of Le Marais in Paris, where queer businesses abound.
- Ghostly Goals: The five ghosts have to wait for over 700 years till they can go to Heaven.
- Ghostwriter: Literally and figuratively. One of the ghosts, Jean-Guy, is quite literate and secretly improves the letter Marc sends to Emma in order to win her heart back, with some beautiful Jean Cocteau verses.
- Happy Ending: At the end, Marc and Emma are back together and decide to reopen a nightclub in the house's basement, and call it "Pompeii" (since Emma is an archaeologist working on the namesake site). Emma even manages to find gay ghosts from Ancient Rome to keep company to the five French ghosts so they won't be alone waiting for 700 years to go to Heaven. And Jean-Guy and his (now older) lover are reunited.
- Haunted House: The house has been uninhabited for 30 years, except by the five ghosts.
- Hiding Behind the Language Barrier: Emma's Italian archaeologist colleague has the hots for her and tells the bartender of their hotel (while she's there with him at the bar, not understanding Italian) that she'll end up in his bed if her husband doesn't pick up the phone.
- History with Celebrity: When he was alive in The '70s, Michel had an affair with Bertrand Delanoë, the Real Life gay mayor of Paris between 2001 and 2014.
- Honking Arriving Car: Marc's friend David honks "La Cucaracha" when his truck arrives at the house.
- I See Dead People: Only Marc can see the five ghosts (at first). Which makes everyone think he's crazy.
- Intangibility: The ghosts can become intangible at will, like going through walls or physical objects. They can also interact with physical objects without trouble.
- Interrupted Intimacy: The five ghosts spying on Marc even as he has intimate moments with Emma disturb him in such moments at the beginning.
- Invisible to Normals: It turns out only straight men who have never had gay sex can see the five gay ghosts.
- Jacob Marley Apparel: The five ghosts wear what they had on when the day they died, including one who has a watch that's forever stuck on the hour of the explosion.
- Life of the Party: The five ghosts were party animals who brutally died in 1979, and they have been partying as ghosts for the following 27 years.
- Mistaken for Gay: The way Marc tells his therapist how he regularly sees men at the house and the fact that he's a construction worker (a very masculine field) prompts the therapist to think he's a repressed homosexual. Marc himself almost thinks he's that afterwards for a while, until an encounter with a gay man who loves "converting" straight men definitely convinces him that he's straight.
- Mistaken for Insane: Due to Marc's reactions to the five ghosts that only he can see, Emma increasingly thinks he's insane.
- Must Have Nicotine: Marc promised Emma to stop smoking, but still makes himself cigarettes and smokes them when she's not there.
- Open-Minded Parent: When Marc tells his Italian grandmother that he thinks he might be homosexual or bisexual, she's not your expected super-Catholic nonna and instead tells him she thought he didn't like her tiramisu dessert, and that she in fact had an affair with a woman when she was younger, which she fondly recalls. Her husband, on the other hand, is a bit more embarrassed by all of this.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: The five ghosts are trapped for decades in the house because of the presence of four stones put in the foundations by The Knights Templar (who were accused of homosexuality in The Middle Ages). The site became cursed when the Knights Templar got purged in 1307, and the four stones became the limits of a perimeter trapping spirits within itself. The four stones have to be moved so the ghosts can move outside the house as well. A similar phenomenon happened in Pompeii as Emma found out.
- Paranormal Investigation: After finding out that the five men he sees are ghosts, Marc calls De Sorgue, a paranormal specialist.
- The Peeping Tom: The five ghosts like to spy on Marc when he's naked in the shower or when he has sex with Emma.
- Product Placement: De Sorgue (the paranormal specialist) is fond of McDonald's meals. He even asks Marc's friend to go seek him a McFlurry.
- Shovel Strike: When Marc belives Emma's father to be an intruder, he attacks him with a shovel.
- Silly Spook: The five ghosts have been partying in the house for 27 years and those with Camp Gay mannerisms still affect them. The worst they do is playing pranks on Marc and teasing him.
- Soapbox Sadie: Michel is the most overtly politicized of the five ghosts. He won't hesitate to call someone "fascist" for perceived homophobia and to him, heterosexuality is nothing but a bourgeois social construct to be demolished.
- Spirit Advisor: When Marc has dinner with Emma to win her heart back, Jean-Guy (who can't be seen by Emma) sits by his side to tell him what to do and what to say to her.
- Straight Gay: Michel (the one who wears a black leather jacket) is the least effeminate of the five gay ghosts, even calling the others "pédés" ("fags") as an Insult of Endearment.
- Trunk Shot: One at the beginning when Emma's father opens his car's trunk.
- Unequal Pairing: Marc is a construction worker, Emma is an archaeologist.
- Where Everybody Knows Your Flame:
- The house's basement was a gay nightclub called L'Ambigu ("The Ambiguous") in The '70s.
- Marc goes to a gay nightclub after being told to "assume" what's perceived as repressed queerness in him by his therapist.
- Marc and the five ghosts go to a gay café and a gay nightclub with Chippendales Dancers in Paris in the third act.
- Marc and Emma reopen a nightclub where L'Ambigu once stood, and again most of the customer base is gay.
