Word: julians
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Julian (Richard Gere) makes his living in the nicer precincts of Los Angeles by providing sexual services to well-off middle-aged ladies. He is pretty, smartly dressed and inarticulate when any serious subject comes up; yet one can understand what a neglected wife might see in him. His power with women derives not from being aggressively male but from being ingratiatingly sweet. He is good at his work and is sufficiently self-aware to understand that his exceptional talent is ultimately self-defeating: he can give pleasure but never receive it. Indeed, the film's major psychological twist...
...film's emphasis, however, is too often elsewhere. Much of the plot revolves around an attempt to frame Julian for a particularly unpleasant sadomasochistic murder. Hector Elizondo is fine as the detective investigating the case, and Julian's attempts to clear himself allow Writer-Director Paul Schrader to penetrate the seamier side of a gigolo's world. Hollywood Boulevard garishness is colorfully contrasted with Rodeo Drive posh. But as in last year's Hardcore, Schrader seems unable to get very far beneath the ugly surface of the demimonde. It is clear he is horrified...
...sans porn, pulse without flesh, a lean, lacquered look at the demons of the California Dream. Instead, Schrader concocted a laughable montage of silly sequences, an absurd plot and bad lines that reaches climax in a bizarre series of fade-outs that symbolize pauses between pelvic thrusts. Gere, as Julian Kaye, makes it clear that he does only straight, high-class women. He looks more embarrassed than worried when he gets framed for a handcuffs-cum-sex murder that he didn't commit in this kinky-trick movie that John Travolta should have made. Schrader filled his script with coincidences...
Truth was not Schrader's goal, however. He tried to create a tense, sexual rhythm of color and sound, the lust of America pressed to a video disk. But he directs with the subtlety of Bo Derek disrobed, surrounding Julian with red-colored objects and shadowy bars, trapping him in a bloody, infernally chic hell...
Lauren Hutton plays Michelle Stafford, the horny wife of a U.S. Senator who drools over Julian, wants him so bad she shakes in his presence. She follows in the grand tradition of Ali MacGraw in Players, a beautiful older woman who can't read a line without revealing her flawed front teeth or her flawed acting. To be fair, no one in American Gigolo has a decent role because Schrader's script fails so miserably ("You could have forgotten me," whines Julian. "I'd rather die," whispers Michelle...