In a desolate, decadent and corrupt world, a man plunges into loneliness and he does not stop feeding the darkness that eats away at his being. This central idea, as well as visual and tonal references to Robert Bresson, define the bulk of Paul Schrader’s filmography, both as a regular screenwriter for Martin Scorsese and as a director. Needless to say, they are not works with all the commercial potential in the world.
Luckily we are dealing with a filmmaker with enough renown to be cult, and he can continue to offer challenging and suffocating character study exercises like ‘The Master Gardener’, his latest release and conclusion to a strange trilogy of rotten men who turn their desolation into a newspaper with the only company of a dim light from a lamp and a glass of whiskey. Although from time to time has left works that have transcended the nichesuch as his script for ‘Taxi Driver’ or his ‘American Gigolo’.
A lonely and gifted man
The latter also has an interesting legacy as one of those films that marked the cinema of the eighties, mainly in terms of aesthetics, rhythm and sound. This remarkable thriller, available to stream via SkyShowtime, is presented as the perfect bridge between decades of cinema while leaving behind one of Richard Gere’s best works.
Here he plays Julian Kay, an intelligent and attractive professional in luxury prostitution. His clients are mainly rich women willing to shell out a good sum for their services. Her jobs sometimes include the wives of influential politicians and businessmen. One of these jobs turns dangerous with the murder of one of his clients after their meeting, and he finds himself drawn into a terrible conspiracy.
Schrader, in the purest Bressonian style, puts us in the life of a criminal who becomes an antihero in fiction. As in ‘Taxi Driver’, it introduces us to a protagonist sunk in solitude in a dark sociopolitical context. This gigolo’s journey represents more than ever that self-made, entrepreneurial America that will go to incredible lengths in the coming decade, but as this film still has one foot in the ’70s it has to take a look at the abyss that lies ahead. stands before him.
‘American Gigolo’: pure eighties cinema
The way that establishes keys that define the erotic thriller, in addition to his morally complex character, make it one of the most influential films for a certain cinema of the eighties. The artificial elegance in the aesthetics, the economic obsession as the theme and that iconic soundtrack of electronic music from Giorgio Moroder They turn it into a pure eighties essence even when it began to be conceived and produced the previous decade.
All of this is what makes ‘American Gigolo’ an important work in American cinema, even if it is not among the most rounded works of its director or among the best thrillers of all time. It is, yes, noticeable and stylish in the best way, macerating the intrigue while dissecting its central character. In addition to being pure eighties, he is pure Schrader, and he is irresistible if you like his tales of lonely and devastated men.
In Espinof | The best erotic movies in history