American Gigolo

During one of the recent freeview weekends, I was able to DVR American Gigolo. Recently, I finally got the chance to watch it.

The movie starts off with my be the most remembered thing about it, the song "Call Me" by Blondie. This is over scenes of Julian Kaye (Richard Gere) driving his Mercedes convertible up the California coast to Malibu. There he's going to meet his boss Anne (Nina van Pallandt). Officially Julian is a chauffeur, but he's really a high-class escort for lonely wealthy women. This enables him to live in a really nice apartment in a tony part of Los Angeles.

However, Anna isn't the only procurer he works for. He can also get good money from Leon (Bill Duke), who sends Julian out to do rather kinkier things, in this case a bondage session with a married couple, the Rheimans, out in Palm Springs with the husband watching Julian engage with the wife.

As part of one of Julian's jobs, he meets Michelle Stratton (Lauren Hutton). The two fall in love with each other, which is a problem in that, well, Julian has his profession. The bigger problem is that Michelle is Mrs. Stratton, and Mr. Stratton is a California state senator with higher ambitions. Obviously the thought of a politician's wife carrying on an affair with an escort would cause a scandal that Michelle doesn't want to cause at all.

She may not have a choice. One night, Mrs. Rheiman is murdered. The police, in the form of Det. Sunday (Hector Elizondo), investigate, and the fact that Julian had been hired comes up so of course the police have to ask questions. (At this point Julian should have immediately stopped and asked for his lawyer, but way too many people are too stupid to do this.) Julian has a fairly airtight alibi -- except that it's that he was sleeping with Michelle at the time of the murder.

Worse for Julian, he begins to realize that he's being framed, but by whom? Sen. Stratton seems like a reasonably candidate if he's figured out that his wife is cheating on him, and in fact Sen. Stratton sends one of his aides out to tail Julian. But in any case Julian has to figure things out without much help from anybody else since he doesn't want to hurt Michelle by revealing the nature of their relationship.

In some ways the idea of the framed man makes American Gigolo seem like it could fit in well in the noir genre, only updated to 1980. And boy has it been updated, since Hollywood of the studio era could never get away with many of the themes here -- prositution, homosexuality, and even Gere's nudity. But it's also extremely 1980 in its production design, which while stylish is also extrememly trapped in 1980. If you want to know what the time looked like, this is a good place to start.

All of this is to say that the movie is actually pretty good; better, I think, than critical reception might have you think. Gere actually gives a pretty good performance, as does Elizondo. But it's also one that really not breaking any new ground beyond updating old themes and using things that couldn't be used earlier. The resolution of the murder case is really not handled as well as I think it could have been.

Still, I can certainly recommend American Gigolo if you want more adult themes.