How American Gigolo flipped Hollywood sexism on… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

How Amer­i­can Gigo­lo flipped Hol­ly­wood sex­ism on its head

14 Nov 2016

Words by Elena Lazic

A man in a white shirt stands in front of a woman on a sofa, smoking a cigarette.
A man in a white shirt stands in front of a woman on a sofa, smoking a cigarette.
Paul Schrader’s 1980 film unashamed­ly objec­ti­fies Richard Gere’s nar­cis­sis­tic lead.

Although per­haps best known as the screen­writer of Mar­tin Scorsese’s Oscar-win­ning 1976 film Taxi Dri­ver, Paul Schrad­er has gone on to become a dis­tinc­tive direc­tor in his own right since the late 1970s. Schrader’s third fea­ture, 1980’s Amer­i­can Gigo­lo, is one of his most inter­est­ing and mem­o­rable. As his lat­est intox­i­cat­ing effort, Dog Eat Dog, arrives in cin­e­mas, it’s this ear­li­er effort which seems most ripe for a revisit.

If noth­ing else, Amer­i­can Gigo­lo can take cred­it for intro­duc­ing Hol­ly­wood and the world to two things: the lux­u­ry Ital­ian fash­ion label Armani, and, after the taster of Ter­rence Malick’s Days of Heav­en two years pre­vi­ous, future megas­tar Richard Gere in all his glo­ry. And what an intro­duc­tion. Decades before Mag­ic Mike, Amer­i­can Gigo­lo was busy unashamed­ly objec­ti­fy­ing its straight, male lead. But unlike almost every female char­ac­ter in main­stream cin­e­ma, Gere’s Julian is a man who always active­ly par­tic­i­pates in his own objectification.

Julian spends a lot of time tak­ing care of his appear­ance and enjoys the atten­tion that prepa­ra­tion brings. Con­sid­er­ing the depress­ing debates that Insta­gram self­ies still spark today, it is incred­i­bly refresh­ing to see a film made 36 years ago which does not con­demn male nar­cis­sism. Instead, it unabashed­ly salutes its pro­tag­o­nist with flat­ter­ing close-ups and extend­ed takes. For much of the film’s run­time there is sim­ply noth­ing to do but watch Gere walk with the most obscene­ly sen­su­ous gait, or sit with the coolest nonchalance.

He is always the best dressed man in the room for obvi­ous rea­sons. Under the pre­tence of guide or trans­la­tor’ for rich, often much old­er women vis­it­ing Los Ange­les, Julian sells much more than his com­pa­ny. The film estab­lish­es its risqué schtick ear­ly on in a scene where Julian almost gets annoyed at a new client – seem­ing­ly not used to this kind of ser­vice – and makes clear with the least sub­tle innu­en­dos that he is ready to open the cham­pagne now.”

Two people, a woman and a man, standing close together in a natural setting.

When Julian realis­es he is being framed for the mur­der of a client, the film seems to morph into a typ­i­cal crime movie set in the world of sex and drugs. But Amer­i­can Gigo­lo is a plea­sur­ably com­plex, dou­ble-sided film. The genre devel­op­ment is only a false-bot­tom, con­ceal­ing an entire­ly dif­fer­ent film. With­in the cold LA crime thriller tem­plate echoed by both by the events in Julian’s life and by the film’s style (all cool neons, syn­thy score by Gior­gio Moroder, and stylised action), one ele­ment stands out which con­tains the secret to the entire movie.

Lau­ren Hutton’s Michelle is a mar­ried woman Julian meets by mis­take one evening. She falls in love with him almost imme­di­ate­ly, and though her love is unrec­i­p­ro­cat­ed, this reject­ed roman­tic inter­est’ reg­u­lar­ly and stub­born­ly returns to inter­rupt the flow of the crime nar­ra­tive. When she asks him, where do you get your plea­sure from?” the ques­tion sounds out of place and total­ly irrel­e­vant to the fair­ly schemat­ic plot. Julian’s lush lifestyle, his gor­geous fea­tures and his praise­wor­thy mis­sion to give plea­sure to women are unde­ni­ably attrac­tive traits. They attach us to his per­spec­tive so strong­ly that, just like him, we com­plete­ly fail to under­stand what Michelle real­ly is all about until the very end of the film.

With all of the peo­ple he used to call his friends turn­ing their back on him, Julian finds him­self spi­ralling towards a show­down with the law. He realis­es, like we do, that his entire life relied on a hand­ful of peo­ple who were on his side only as long as they stood to prof­it. His entire life was one big busi­ness trans­ac­tion. In that moment, Michelle’s rel­e­vance becomes crys­tal clear.

Long before the crime plot was to lead Julian to lose all his friends, she had already realised that he was all alone; that he had already worked him­self into a more metaphor­i­cal cor­ner than a prison cell. Only then, after he has lost every­thing that had no val­ue in the first instance, does Julian realise that love isn’t mere­ly a dis­trac­tion but some­thing he had always need­ed. It’s a melan­choly and poignant end­ing to a film that is rich with super­fi­cial pleasures.

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