American Gigolo
Paul Schrader copied the classic film noir so well, it includes Hays Code limits. Is this for adults, or is it Bugsy Malone?
The soundtrack is pure 80’s, “Call Me” is like “Holding Out For a Hero”, a pop hit completely changed by association with its origin.
Unless I’m mistaken, this is like a film noir where Richard Gere is all the stock characters: the hero fighting the system, the homme fatale seducing the woman, the fall guy, the sex worker with the heart of gold. On the other hand, our hero is not so much flawed as ambiguous: it’s no clear if he did in fact murder the woman he was BSDM-ing it up, while the husband jerked off in the room.
Just goes to show you can’t take puritanism out of American film, even with a cast of (mostly) unknowns with interesting last names. It’s ingrained now, Eddie Mannix built it and it lasted for decades.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.