- Carol Laure, Gerard Depardieu, and Patrick Dewaere in Get Out Your Handkerchiefs
In an interview with Michael Phillips that appeared last week in the Chicago Tribune, John Turturro cited French novelist and filmmaker Bertrand Blier as a major influence on Fading Gigolo, the new movie he wrote, directed, and stars in. He also said he’s working on a loose remake of Blier’s breakthrough feature Going Places (1974). These statements provide useful insight into Fading Gigolo, which feels out of step with current U.S. cinema in its frank, yet prosaic sex talk and its curious, not-quite-dreamlike sensibility. Blier is no longer au courant in U.S. film culture, but his films were regularly distributed here for about two decades—at the height of his popularity, the National Society of Film Critics named his Get Out Your Handkerchiefs the best film of 1978. (It’s commonly accepted that the movie received the distinction because the two front-runners, Days of Heaven and The Deer Hunter, split the majority vote down the middle—even so, the award speaks to Blier’s U.S. reception at the time.) In the unlikely event that Turturro’s film becomes a sleeper hit, perhaps it will renew interest in this singular French talent.
This line of thinking tends to make U.S. audiences uncomfortable, as evidenced by the derisive laughter that Richard Fleischer’s Mandingo and Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls—two of the most serious movies ever made about this country—continue to provoke. In that regard, it’s less surprising that Blier fell out of favor with U.S. movie culture than that he managed to engage with it for as long as he did.
