flawed yet involving character drama

Paul Schrader’s “American Gigolo” contains a lot of the rough edges, sensationalism, and perverse lifestyle choices you would expect to find in a Schrader movie. Like much of his directorial work, it’s a slow-paced character study- here about a man who has never felt all that secure with any one. He really hasn’t even felt the need to. But what would happen if he did? It’s something Schrader explores with decent if a bit mixed results.


Richard Gere took the title role and it made him a star. He is Julian Kay, a male prostitute who spends much of his time establishing a personae of style and class. His hair, clothes, and workouts get him in the door but he has personality, a flair for languages, art, and culture, and there is a selflessness to him that allows his older female clients to know that he’s always putting their needs first.


He has his clients but sometimes he scans the hotel bars, looking for out of towners possibly hoping for a nightly fling. He finds one such woman one night. Their conversation is among some of the finest dialogue in the movie- first speaking about languages before he elegantly, and still hilariously, mentions he’s also fluent in “international language” as well.


The same woman tracks him down later. Her name is Michelle (Lauren Hutton), and she’s curious what a pro might be like. She follows him to his apartment, expecting a circular bed and mirrors on the ceiling (who wouldn’t) but is surprised to discover it’s filled with books, vases, and all around normalcy. What she finds there is also enough to fill a massive hole in her heart, one left by her husband, a senator who hasn’t made her feel anything in years. She winds up falling in love with Julian, but would he give up romancing all these other women for her?


During this time another trick that Julian pulled early in the movie is coming back to bite him. A husband and wife wanted him for some rough stuff with the wife but Julian isn’t feeling it. Later, when the wife winds up murdered, the husband definitely seems like a prime suspect but he manages to lay the blame elsewhere and soon a Detective (Hector Elizondo) is poking into Julian’s affairs, and Julian believes he’s being framed.


From here it seems fairly obvious that Schrader is developing a story about real trust. With all of Julian’s fancy clothes, apartment, car, ect, he is really, at heart, just a lonely man selling a fantasy to upper class people. They care nothing for him and wouldn’t think twice about selling him up the river if it meant keeping their own asses out of the fire. What makes that sort of tragic is that he does feel such an obligation toward them.


Real love can be redemptive here yet Schrader struggles to hit the right note of feeling. Gere is very good with this male hooker with a heart of gold, using his handsomeness for good while also showing the emptiness that is Julian’s life. And Hutton is very poignant as well, downcast and soft-spoken as a woman who has long since given up on pleasure. The fault is the screenplay’s though as it never tells us what is drawing these two together.

There’s also a question of how Julian has gotten the way he is. What encouraged him to be a male hooker? What made him become such a withdrawn person who struggles with real love? He has hardlines about certain things, especially gay stuff, yet the business seems to be predatory in that way. Is that something that has affected him? There is a whole life with Julian and atmosphere around the sexual underground that seems only scratched at surface level.

Yet the film works for the most part. Most of the time we’re going more by Schrader’s noble intentions rather than execution but, no doubt, Gere and Hutton do a good enough job of filling in the important info on the characters and the film is glitzy and has a fun 80’s soundtrack from Giorgio Moroder featuring the Blondie song “Call Me”. It’s not great, but the commentary on this lifestyle is good enough to be compelling.