David Hollander handles with cunning and gloomy an iconic story in pop culture
American Gigolo part of two very marked references. On the one hand, the series is based on the film of the same title by Paul Schrader, the one that made Richard Gere a superstar. On the other hand, the conversion of the iconic 1980 film into a 2022 series is in the hands of David Hollander, creator and showrunner of Ray Donovan. There is a lot of this series in American Gigolo. His Los Angeles is the same luminous but relentless city and its protagonist is a go-getter similar to the one played by Liev Schreiber.
Hollander’s choice as captain of such a project makes a lot of sense. American Gigolothe series, is a concoction of things, but the recipe is well calibrated and the drink tastes delicious. It is a bit sad that it arrives in Spain invisible within the colorful initial catalog of SkyShowtime, although how to stand out in the meantime? Yellowstone.
Another inevitable thing is to wonder if this series is possible without someone like Richard Gere. The American Gigolo The original and Gere have a perfect symbiosis: he brings his unrepeatable charisma to the film and it returns the favor by making movie history. American Gigolo, the film, is not an outstanding title but it is legendary. The cinema of the 80s is not understood without it.
American Gigolothe Serie, It will not go down in television pop history, and yet it is hard to fault it.. As Julian Kaye, the prostitute of the title, Jon Bernthal is more than fine. He is not Richard Gere but who is he. Gretchen Mol isn’t Lauren Hutton either, but she asks herself. David Hollander’s series knows this and draws on its predecessor with tremendous cunning and great care. You know it’s something else. needs to be something else.
His Julian Kaye is released from jail after 15 years in prison for a crime that, surprisingly, he has not committed. This unfair papering has marked Kaye, who is forced to reintegrate into the real world without the clean slate that a long prison term theoretically facilitates. As I did in Ray DonovanDavid Hollander bets on hopelessness and pessimism.
For him, the city only degrades, people only change for the worse and fifteen years behind bars does not help when it comes to recovering your job as a paid lover. Everything is getting worse.
As much as the credits of the series use again the vitamin Call me of Blondie from the movie, times have changed. We hear Debbie Harry lewdly singing that call me and see the new Julian Kaye in his convertible, picking out suits and pleasing ladies.
However the eroticism and suspense of the new series will soon show us that they are not those of the then. American Gigolo it’s a sequel you approach with a knife in your teeth, expecting some absurd nostalgic gibberish or an impossible reinterpretation. And it is reinterpretation and nostalgia, but not the kind that take the viewer back to a foolishly idealized past. American Gigolo it is something else.
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