American Gigolo (1980)

I really like movies that are at the turn of the decade. They very much feel like the old decade but you can see the new decades styles and attitudes starting to take shape. One such movie is American Gigolo even though it was written in the 70s and filmed in the 1979 its reputation is of a movie that helped define 80s decadence. I think it gets underrated and gets a bad wrap cause people see Richard Gere's name and the movie mistitled as an erotic thriller and somewhat dismiss it.


It's actually not a Richard Gere movie at all but the work of writer/director Paul Schrader. If you're unfamiliar with his work he's the man who wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull was well as several others. This movie is a thriller but more of a paranoid thriller, a noir(just look at the venetian blinds on the movie poster if that's not a dead giveaway)and a love story.


It's got a great opening with Julian Kaye(Gere) speeding down the highway in his mercedes with Blondie's Call Me cranking, mixed with shots of his clothes shopping. What Julian Kaye is is a high priced male prostitute. He works out, speaks several languages he's even learning Swedish for an $8k job who's flying in, and takes pride in his work at making women happy though there is no love in it for him. You get the sense that beneath the facade his very lonely and unhappy. His life starts to change when he meets a senators wife, Michelle and begins a real relationship with her.


Everything would be going fine except for this one job his former pimp Leon asks him to do. A wealthy man who wants Julian to have rough sex with his wife while he watches. Julian reluctantly goes along and a couple of days later she turns up dead. With the cops suspecting Julian and turning up the heat and Julian unable to secure an alibi from his Beverly Hills society clientele whom he was with that evening. It's at this point Julian starts to reek of desperation and paranoia as he scrambles to find a way out of his situation that the movie takes off and where I will leave you without revealing anymore plot points.


The thing I like best about the movie though is the set designs and cinematography, it's really a fine picture to look at.