In "American Gigolo," Julian Kay (Richard Gere) skims around the Southern California freeways in a shiny black Mercedes 450-SL convertible, often with the top down, so that we can study his narrow eyes behind his tortoiseshell shades, his expensively cut hair, and his extraordinary but uninteresting good looks. When he alights, we see him buying expensive clothes at Juschi's boutique, on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills (or, rather, being bought clothes: a woman is paying the bill); or having a drink at the Polo Lounge (he keeps an odd jacket or two with the hat-check girl there, in case of social emergencies); or dining at Perino's or Chasen's; or discussing business with a beautiful female pimp (Nina Van Pallandt) at her Malibu beach house, where the sundeck is crowded with half-naked women catching some rays; or visiting other women in Westwood and Bel Air and Palm Springs. A great many older but well-kept-up women pay him hundreds of dollars to make love to them, for Julian is a top-level, 450-SL-model male prostitute, and Michelle (Lauren Hutton), the terrific-looking but unhappy wife of a California state senator, is in love with him. Inescapably, irresponsibly (we feel terrible about it, really), we find ourselves beginning to have the wrong thoughts about him: This cat has really got it made! What we are probably meant to think about Julian is to wonder where he comes from—in both the Webster's and the Cyra McFadden senses of the phrase—but the script of "American Gigolo" (by Paul Schrader, who also directed the picture) is generally unhelpful. Julian lies to one woman when he tells her that he used to be a pool boy at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and to another when he says he was "born in Torino but studied in Nantes" (he is said to speak five or six languages); finally, alone with the senator's wife, he exclaims, "I'm not from anywhere—I'm from this bed." he has scruples ("I don't do fags or couples"), and he prides himself on his ability to bring sexual pleasure to sad old women. This is ugly but promising. What else are we going to discover about Julian? Unfortunately, that's about it. Now and then, in his pad, he picks up a vase or a painting and studies it enigmatically, but he spends more of his time opening the drawers of his bureau and the doors of his closet, so that he and we can gaze at length on his rich, muted shirtings, his narrow fifty-dollar ties, and his sleek Giorgio Armani jackets and suits. Late in the picture, Julian murmurs to Michelle, "All my life I've been looking for something—I don't know what it is. Maybe it's you," and at last we understand. Julian has, like, lost touch with his feelings. He is not in a good space. Poor Julian.

Paul Schrader is an earnest filmmaker (he directed "Blue Collar" and wrote the screenplay for Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver"), but "American Gigolo" gives the impression that he was distracted by the looks of things in the picture and allowed himself and his audience to become tourists of these expensive places and people. Perhaps sensing the absence of anything serious or moving at the end of the road, he more or less gave up on the search for Julian's soul, and instead involved his hero in a sadomasochistic murder, a silly frameup, and a brutal accidental killing: television-series stuff….

"American Gigolo" will inevitably be measured against Hal Ashby's "Shampoo," because of the films' similar themes and settings, but the comparison is deadly. Warren Beatty's George—scooting around town on that motorcycle, with his hair dryer tucked in his belt—was so whipped and confused and rewarded and harassed by his own violently libidinous attractiveness that the scattered scenes and beds in the picture could hardly contain its energy and surprises. "Shampoo" was so sexy that it was funny, but "American Gigolo" presents a humorless, Penthouse kind of sex, all dolled up with expensive "real" settings, foreign cars, hi-fi sets, and designer clothes, but barely alive at its glum, soft core. (pp. 107-08)