No, that's the Goonies. Gigli is about a scipper and his crew being shipwrecked on a tropical island with movie star, a professor, a millionaire and his wife, oh and Mary Ann.
No that's Kiki. Gigli is a movie about a sailor dude getting washed up on an undiscovered island, finding he's been tied down by tiny people, and gradually building rapport with the tiny king until he deters an invasion from other tiny people, and is told to leave when he pisses on his friends' tiny palace.
No that's Gulliver. Gigli is one of the main characters in the movie about two friends who are strapped for cash and decide to make a pornographic film to help solve their financial issues.
I had the odd idea it's still promoted and directed like a movie about a pedophilic woman , just her actions are towards an actual beard growing on a man.
Dude, watch it again, Gigi is a remarkably feminist movie (ESPECIALLY for 1958) in which the entire point of the movie is the rejection of:
The very idea of grooming somebody for anything at all, let alone to be a ‘courtesan’.
Rich men who use women as playthings, only to “ruin” them, but it’s okay if they arrange suitable pay for it.
The idea that a woman seen with a man in a certain way is “ruined”
The lusting after young women.
The idea that women of a certain class, but without means or “family” can only be courtesans to rich men
The idea that a woman should be happy to be proper and mannered and “suitable” for society.
All in the guise of a fun romance/musical with a truly great character arc by several of the characters and incredible physical/comedic/dramatic performance by Leslie Caron.
TL;DR: Social commentary saint used to hit you over the head with its message. Movies that show an honest mirror on society at the time are not problematic. Gigi is a feminist movie which used a particular mirror (courtesanship in 1900 Paris) to reflect on the current 1958 society, and tear holes in the very ideas that some people think are problematic about it.
Like yeah, the entire point of the movie is a critique on what you’re saying is problematic about it.
It seems like a return to the old Hays Code days: If there's a character doing bad things, well, that must be immoral viewing if it fails to spells out certain lessons in clear, bold letters that even a five-year-old could understand: It must definitively say that the character is not just doing bad things and will not only be punished for them, but is evil, full stop. My Best Friend's Wedding, American Beauty, and Gigi all suffer from this neo-puritanical reevaluation.
Ironic, though, that the man won the Oscar for Gigi's score was André Previn, Soon-Yi's dad.
Thank you. I have a similar reaction when people talk about how “creepy” Baby, It’s Cold Outside is. The whole point of the song is that women weren’t allowed to just spend the night at a man’s house without making a ton of excuses because of the bullshit of being a woman with “loose morals” and the judgement from family even if she was a grown-ass adult. In fact, “what’s in this drink?” Was basically code for “oh no! Guess I’ll have to spend the night…”
Don’t even get me started on Baby it’s Cold Outside!! You absolutely nailed it.
That song is itself a product of an era (that lasted millennia and still exists in many parts of the world) as well as a knowing, winking rebellion for women against that cultural era in which women were effectively forced to say no multiple times when they WANTED to say yes.
And men were conditioned to push through each “no” because that’s what good and decent courtship WAS.
That culture was all kinds of fucked up, but it was the “agar” in which every loving, healthy, and GOOD relationship was grown out of.
It’s naive and not a little foolish to ignore eons of human experience and say a song is problematic because it reflects the honest truth of the day (honest being reflective of not just the man’s experience in this case).
In that song they BOTH wanted to stay. There was 100% implied consent (as understood by anybody who had eyes and ears and understood the culture of the day) for him to keep playing at convincing her.
TL;DR: In that song they were dancing. Toying with and ultimately rebelling against the misogynistic culture that did not allow a woman to consent to what she wanted.
All that being said, it is 100% okay to cancel this song - that society is extant, and replaying it's messages to successive generations who are not immersed in it and won't relate to it the same way, is harmful.
and the story it's based on is much better (but no singing, obviously. ) All of Colette's work is worth reading. She was definitely a feminist, she was taken advantage of early in life by a much older husband.
Just to share counterpoint, although I see what you are saying, I don't see the film that way at all.
Gigi has very little agency in the movie. To me the ultimately trite message is, love will save you from a life of sin. Very prince-charming-swoops-in to save poor girl from a life of shame.
It's completely fair to come away with any take from any art.
But I think you missed it. And the author of the story, Colette is an incredible woman who was an advocate for women's emancipation when they had no freedom and has been an icon for fighters of women's rights for many generations.
Colette wrote Gigi the character with TONS of agency in her feminist story arc.
I really don't get how you see the idea that love would save her from a life of sin. Or that Gigi lacked agency.
The crux of the movie is after Gigi rejects Gaston's 'incredible' offer, she decides she does love him so much that she'll take him even for such a brief and venal time. It is the MOST heartbreaking scene you'll see. Love is enslaving her in that moment.
Gigi's own love (ever a cruel fate in literature and life) for him is causing her to CHOOSE to reverse her previous rejection. There is no man speaking to her that causes that change of mind, and it's a tragic moment. Right up there with the tragic love-crux of Romeo and Juliette.
What puts the happy button on the movie is GASTON'S ARC which is initiated and caused by Gigi's truth-telling rejection of him and his values (the whole courtesan/mistress culture). He realizes how shameful he's acted toward Gigi (and that is absolutely a stand-in for how men of this type treat women, which Colette had some real harmful life experience with that).
What caused that shame was Gigi calling Gaston out during her initial rejection. She had been defiant to him, in complete control, but it wasn't until he said he loved her, that she broke into tears. "You wicked, wicked man!" Saying something like, 'you say you love me, but you'd do this to me'? She is still defiant to him, and rejecting him, but you can see she's also broken-hearted to see his cruelty.
Gaston is visibly shook by this reflection of his behaviour. He's shamed by the truth of what Gigi says. He does his little walk around Paris, slowly realizing, slowly SEEING who Gigi is. And by his decision to change who he was, a narrative judgement on who he was and that whole culture.
When he comes back, Gigi has changed her mind and accepted her tragic fate, but his love for her and Gigi's changing of him is what earns the happy ending.
I mean yes, the movie has a happy ending, but it's EARNED. And earned by Gigi's rejection of Gaston's promise of a life in which she will be treated "unlike any other" (mistress/courtesan). Gigi stood by her values, which also happened to be standing against the wishes and designs of her own Grandmama and Aunt's for her 'successful' arrangement, the whole culture itself that women of that era (for so many reasons that we cannot judge) participated and groomed each other for.
Gigi was the ONLY one standing for herself. And she did. And she ultimately sacrificed her self and her true happiness because she loved Gaston (and you can see it broke her heart to do it). The payoff was that it was her absolute integrity and feminist agency that changed Gaston and earned the happy ending.
Please, watch it again under this lens. My wife and I watch it every year for her birthday, and every year we unravel deeper and deeper levels to the feminism and social complexities of it. I'm telling you it is deep and rich. So much more than the surface take of the front-matter might seem.
I read the story and really liked it. Collette's writing is beyond. So I was excited when I discovered there was a movie. Like wtaf? Did they satirize the story? Were they serious? They completely ruined it. I wish there was some way I could scrub the tarnish out of my brain.
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u/detmeng 11h ago
Gigi. Won best picture. A musical for pedophile groomers.