- Richard Gere in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
I have no plans to see The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel anytime soon, though I’m sure I’ll end up watching it some night down the road when I’m trying to fall asleep. The movie features Richard Gere in a supporting role, which makes it grade-A insomniac viewing as far as I’m concerned. I find Gere to be a soothing presence in everything he’s done post-Dr. T & the Women—a run of generally mediocre, but almost always competently made films that, if nothing else, grant the actor plenty of opportunities to look handsome. Gere isn’t the only movie star to have aged gracefully, though few others have made a spectacle of it to the degree that he has. Indeed the chief pleasure of such forgettable pictures as The Hoax, The Hunting Party, and The Double is watching Gere deflect whatever mediocrity comes his way. After weathering years in the spotlight, embarrassing rumors, getting banned from the People’s Republic of China, and more than his share of terrible movies (No Mercy, Final Analysis, Intersection, First Knight, et cetera), his charm is pretty much inviolable.
Dr. T & the Women marks the turning point in Gere’s career, the film in which he acknowledged he was no longer young and started aging in stride. His watershed work in that film is one of the few genuine star turns in Robert Altman’s filmography—in fact, the movie probably would have fallen apart without him. Playing an in-demand Dallas gynecologist who can’t get beautiful women to leave him alone, Dr. T is an epic joke on the actor’s sex appeal. Whereas Gere radiated charisma in his earlier films, in Dr. T he’s the eye of the storm. The movie rages around him, but he stays unflappable, projecting an inner calm rather than outward confidence. It’s one of the greatest straight man performances in American movie comedy, an act of composure that approaches the beatific. Gere’s recent performances suggest an ongoing series of variations on that triumph, and frankly I could watch him do it for another few decades.
