{"id":13587,"date":"2011-02-13T13:49:30","date_gmt":"2011-02-13T21:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=13587"},"modified":"2011-02-13T13:50:35","modified_gmt":"2011-02-13T21:50:35","slug":"gigola-laure-charpentier-2010-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=13587","title":{"rendered":"Gigola (Laure Charpentier, 2010): France"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden<\/a>. \u00a0Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2011.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Hollywood prostitutes, as we know, come blessed with hearts of gold.\u00a0 They\u2019ll help you pay for damages to Dad\u2019s Porsche and send you on your way to Princeton, or wow your business partners then defrost your heart so you can whisk them off like fairy-tale princesses.\u00a0 Not so with the Parisian lady of the night featured in Gigola<\/a>.\u00a0 Here, the hooker quickly develops into an immaculately dressed ice-maiden, breaking both hearts and noses as she plies her trade.\u00a0 Unfortunately the film shares much with its protagonist: it\u2019s all style with little emotional depth to offer.<\/p>\n

The film starts with an interesting enough premise. \u00a0Before taking the name that gives the film its title, Gigola (Lou Doillon) embarks upon an affair with a female teacher, but her foray into forbidden passion is cut short by her lover’s suicide.\u00a0\u00a0 Gigola shuts down her emotions, retreating into the Paris underworld where she prostitutes herself and others to rich woman.\u00a0 She\u2019s a high class, cross dressing hooker, good enough at her job to be lavished with cars and jewelry by her doting clientele.\u00a0 Her father is an opium fiend who is bleeding her mother\u2019s inherited fortune dry, one of the girls who works in her club is teetering on the edge of insanity, and a local gangster or two have issues with her lesbian-pimp status.\u00a0 It all sounds like a recipe for either a fascinating character study, or a bawdy, violent romp.\u00a0 It\u2019s neither.<\/p>\n

The problems really revolve around the lead, though whether the blame lies with the actor or writer\/director Laure Charpentier is unclear.\u00a0 I\u2019m tempted to think the latter.\u00a0 Gigola\u2019s emotional shut-down is too complete.\u00a0 After the loss of her first love, nothing seems to really touch her.\u00a0 Outside of a couple of angry outbursts, we\u2019re given little to reveal any inner turmoil in the character.\u00a0 Were this presented as a front, behind which some deeper being still lurked, the film would have held more power, more sway over my emotions.\u00a0 Alternatively, had her increasing hardness made her a figure of tragedy, her isolation leading her into darker, more dangerous places, then she might have had the power to hold attention.\u00a0 Instead, she\u2019s a Teflon shadow.\u00a0 Events occur around her, through her, but they never touch her, the aftermath never sticks to her.\u00a0 Relationships end, people die, nothing changes.\u00a0 The film\u2019s final act of isolation should be heart-wrenching, but with Gigola\u2019s armor not even tarnished, let alone breached, by loss, it becomes just another trifle.\u00a0 She walks away not a mortally wounded creature, but exactly the same woman she was an hour before.<\/p>\n

This air of detachment, perhaps of blandness, permeates the rest of the film.\u00a0 The film has its moments of nudity, yet they neither titillate nor disgust.\u00a0 Violence happens, but it is neither exciting nor its impact felt.\u00a0 The space does leave you time to think, but the film raises too few questions to fill its hollow center.\u00a0 Perhaps it is a Hollywood hooker’s story after all.<\/p>\n

Alternative film recommendation: Or<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden. \u00a0Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2011. Hollywood prostitutes, as we know, come blessed with hearts of gold.\u00a0 They\u2019ll help you pay for damages to Dad\u2019s Porsche and send you on your way to Princeton, or wow your business partners then defrost your heart so you can whisk them off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,146],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-santa-barbara-film-festival-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}