American Gigolo<\/em>, as played by Richard Gere, is all about masks and appearances. His personality has been carefully crafted so that his elderly female clients feel special and cared for. When he is alone, he drops the public swagger. There are a couple of scenes showing Julian at home. His home is impenetrable, his private fortress. He is seen working out, listening to Swedish language tapes. One scene in particular stands out as a quintessential Private Moment.<\/p>\nA variety of ties and shirts lie on Julian\u2019s bed, everyday objects transformed into glittering possibilities of persona, just because of how Gere looks at them. He has a merciless connoisseur’s eye, but that eye does not obliterate warmth. Every tie, every shirt, opens up worlds in his head. They’re all<\/i> beautiful. What matters is putting the right tie together with the right shirt. That will take some time. <\/p>\n
Smokey Robinson sings in the background, \u201cThe love I saw in you was just a mirage \u2026\u201d Apt words, since Julian’s dreamspace of persona, of projected self – normally a woman’s job – is also a mirage. Julian’s whole life is a mirage. <\/p>\n
Julian, in his underwear, stands by the bed, looking down at the ties and shirts, considering the combinations, colors, textures. He cocks his head, thinking. He purses his lips after a moment. He seems pleased at what he sees. There is a unique blend of laziness and focus on his face. He is like a confident athlete or an animal. He is not in a hurry, but his eventual choice (which tie goes with which shirt) is very important. Sometimes, as he moves the ties around from shirt to shirt, he sings along with Smokey Robinson. \u201cYou led me on \u2026with untrue kisses \u2026\u201d, but he appears to be unconscious of the fact that he is singing. This is what happens when we feel truly private. We don’t sing along to a song like we’re in a karaoke bar. We weave into the song, we weave back out. It’s not performative. It’s something else. Here, the song is all part of his dreamspace of self-absorption. The moment is so private that if someone walked in, he would stop what he was doing. He would have to grapple, quickly, for his public persona. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s something stereotypically feminine about such private moments of unembarrassed self-regard, which is why they can be so unbalancing and riveting when we see it in a man. In the movies, when women look in the mirror (in public or by themselves), they usually do so to check the perfection of the mask: Powder applied, lipstick applied, how do I look, all still okay? But when men look in the mirror, they attempt to either look beneath the mask, trying to find the self, brutalized in the outside world by having to “Be a Man” all the time – OR to pump UP the mask, to step into a world where they dominate. It’s a different relationship to Self. <\/p>\n
Here, Julian is engaged in the same process as women looking in the mirror, except that while his mask is being chosen (the brown tie with the blue shirt, etc.), he is also communing with something intensely pleasurable, visceral. He is not analytical. He languishes in his own possibilities. He wallows in aestheticism. He is outside of Self, outside of Thought. It\u2019s there in the boyish cock of his head to one side as he looks over the ties, the way he purses his lips happily in a moment so vulnerable that no one on the outside has ever seen him in that way. He doesn\u2019t look at women the way he looks at those ties, with the same lazy satisfied sensual appreciation. With women, he is kind, the kindness coming from an extreme knowing-ness. He knows how to make them come. He is proud of that, not in a cocky way – as a matter of fact it’s the opposite. He knows how to serve them. Other men are brutes with them and don’t care. He cares and takes the time. It makes him feel like he’s “really done something”. Still, there’s a distance there with women, and it is that distance that draws women to him. The ties, though? He looks at those ties with a satisfaction so deep he’s practically satiated. Yes, yes, those colors are just right. Just right. <\/em> <\/p>\nManohla Dargis once pointed out that Gere\u2019s \u201cgifts as a film actor are located in his body, in his silky walk and fluid gestures.\u201d <\/p>\n
True, and when Gere is allowed to incorporate his own natural narcissism into a role, he shines. It’s part of what he brings to the table, part of who he is. He is not convincing as a conventional romantic leading man. He is too self-centered. He gives himself away in a scene in Pretty Woman<\/i> where he and Julia Roberts get out of a limo together on an airfield. He gets out of the limo and just stands there, as she, in her long gown, gets out of the car by herself. It’s an unconscious moment from him, it’s not “highlighted” as a character bit by Garry Marshall. It doesn’t even occur<\/i> to him to lend her a hand, which would have been interesting if they had made more of a point of it. In its own small way, Richard Gere not helping Julia Roberts out of the limo completely obliterates the fairy-tale narrative the film is trying to tell. I am not criticizing that moment. I think it’s FASCINATING. <\/p>\n
Narcissistic self-regard is not a flaw<\/i> in Richard Gere, I am not judging<\/em> him for his lack of manners. I’m not that middle-class. I am saying that that dynamic is interesting<\/i> and also very important<\/i> to explaining his talent and how it expresses itself. <\/p>\nThere he was, trapped in a Cinderella story, supposedly the Prince, but he doesn’t give her a helping hand out of the car. Classic Gere! but misplaced in that story, where we are supposed to see him as a “catch”, a prince. In Officer and a Gentleman<\/i>, a love story, his isolation and self-absorption is what made that character so deadly as a boyfriend. The arc of the film is that he had to give that up in order to truly become a “gentleman”, but for the entirety of the story we watch him circling only himself<\/i>. It is a fascinating and not quite likeable combo, and that is Gere’s sweetest spot: fascinating and not quite likeable. <\/p>\n
Gere needs<\/em> that narcissism as an actor. He doesn\u2019t seem to register as an actor without it. Narcissists drive women crazy<\/i>. Women want to capture, to be captured, to get “in there” with him, to be allowed entryway into the precious interior space. Women go NUTS for guys like Zack Mayo, and women get their lives WRECKED in the process. <\/p>\nIn American Gigolo<\/em>, we are given a brief glimpse of the narcissist \u201cat home\u201d. Gere the actor knows that this is a glimpse only the privileged are allowed to witness. He understands that that is the purpose of the scene: Release the character, momentarily, from his public persona, unfetter him from his \u201crole\u201d and let us see him. Let us see what he does when he’s all alone. <\/p>\nAmerican Gigolo<\/em> wouldn\u2019t be the same movie without that short sequence. The film is bleak, it echoes with loneliness. Julian, sleek and perfect, maneuvers his way through the underworld, trying to maintain his standards (no “rough tricks”, no “fags”), and as he begins to lose control, as his friends abandon him, he starts to face the heart of darkness, the abyss at the center of his life, at the center of his personality. The problem is his personality HAS no center. Maybe there’s no “there” there in the first place. Nothing is real. <\/p>\nBut in this short scene, where he places his ties on his shirts and sings to himself, we see behind the mask, and we realize that everything else we have seen, every varied role he slips into, has been \u201cjust a mirage\u201d. <\/p>\n
Gere portrays a tailspin of increasing vulnerability over the course of American Gigolo<\/em>, but nowhere is he more vulnerable and naked than in that one minute of film when he looks down at the ties, cocks his head lazily, and purses his lips in satisfaction at what he sees. <\/p>\n
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