Love I Saw in Gere was just a Mirage

 AMERICAN GIGOLO (1980)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"American Gigolo" has all the hallmarks of a new luridly fascinating chapter from the world of screenwriter and director Paul Schrader. It has Richard Gere as a male prostitute who works for very wealthy clients. Its got the artificial world of Los Angeles as its backdrop, a memorable character of its own. Its got Lauren Hutton as a woman who is charmed by Gere and falls in love with him, almost inexplicably. Then there are those clients who have bizarre fantasies they want fulfilled with Gere, some of which don't surprise me since I haven't seen the film in forty years (and probably did not surprise many other adult viewers in 1980 either). As a tale of the inside world of prostitution on a sophisticated scale, "American Gigolo" is remarkably absorbing. When the lurid goings-on turns to a story involving murder, the movie feels like standard issue melodrama and that is a crying shame.

Gere is Julian, the male escort who lives the most superficial life you can imagine. He has a fantastically luxurious apartment where he listens to Smokey Robinson's "The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage" while selecting color-coordinated ties and suits. Shoes are important of course, not to mention the look of a professional who works out, keeps his chin up and his shoulders back. He is almost a businessman working for a firm except it is all for show, to maintain the appearance of an elegant individual ready for sex and to please women (he doesn't have sex with gays and has no interest in kinky sex). That is all he knows, and that is all he does. He has no aspirations, no long-term goals and probably no prospects of ever getting married. Julian exists to please women in bed.

When Julian tries to pick up a lonely woman at a hotel bar (Lauren Hutton), something happens. Julian doesn't exactly fall in love with her but he is dumbstruck by her beauty and her heavenly voice. The woman turns out to be Michelle Stratton, a California state senator's wife, and so this developing sexual relationship teetering on love may be risky. If the film continued along those lines, it might have been one of the more unusual love stories. But before you know it, a murder takes place - a client Julian had sex with in front of her husband had been killed and Julian is the prime suspect. He has obviously been framed and then we get the inquisitive detective, and one of Julian's pimps who may have framed him that leads to yet another murder, justified or not. 

"American Gigolo" has the charm and charisma of Richard Gere to warrant a look - he is very good at playing a boring person. This Julian has no inner life - he is a robot with a spark of charm and that is only because of Gere. The movie has an entrancing first half and then it devolves from its backroom intrigue of a world alien to most to an overheated, overdone thriller. The ending was strange because after seeing the film, I completely forgot how it ended. Or maybe, like the indifferent Julian himself, I just didn't care.