French Gigolo Movie Trailer Review

By our guest blogger, Kicia Sears

This movie is about sex. SEX. The trailer for “French Gigolo” wants to make sure that despite its narrator’s claims about emotional turmoil and human drama, we remember that the movie has SEX. Basically there are three shots in the whole trailer: Guy with shirt off, close-up of Nathalie Baye’s Face, and finally, Nathalie and Guy passionately entangled. The story gleaned from the trailer is that a middle-aged woman who wishes to live a commitment free life frequents the services of male escorts, until she finds herself falling for one of them. It seems like a pretty predictable plot: Lonely, middle-aged woman discovers she can’t keep her feelings separate from sex, but the narrator makes a comment about it being a story of “obsession,” and coupled with the sinister music, we are lead to believe that there might be a twist to this trope.

Narration in excess is a weak storytelling technique, but is largely forgivable in movie trailers because of the time constraints. However, the narration for “French Gigolo” is so obnoxious and off-putting it is a struggle to finish watching it in its 90-second entirety. It sounds like the narrator has been given index cards with a heading and a few bullet points rather than a script and he reads it as is. There is so much narration that it seems as though the entire plot is given away except for the last few scenes. Who wants to pay $10 to see the last 15 minutes of the movie?

The trailer actually starts off well. The first scene containing a voiceover of Nathalie Baye as Judith saying, “He remembers my name. I like working with a pro” is really humorous and intriguing. Then the narration stumbles in and it just goes downhill from there. When the narrator says, “Now, she’s breaking her own rules,” we’ve reached the point of no return.

There are much better ways to pique interest from an audience and this movie already has aces up its sleeve: French and Sex. However, they squandered whatever intrigue they had by placing the brunt of the trailer on the narrator. If they had done a completely silent trailer and shown the same images, set to the same sinister music, it would have been much better.

As it stands, it seems that almost the entirety of the plot is revealed by bad narration. Isn’t what sets film apart from other art forms is its ability to tell a story through nuances of camera placement, editing, music and lighting? The trailer for “French Gigolo” has failed its potential to be interesting enough to get someone to pay to see the movie. Which is sad, because it’s probably got a lot of sex.

See for yourself in the trailer for "French Gigolo" below: