Richard Gere Comes Full Circle With Cannes Title ‘Oh, Canada’:

It’s been more than four decades since Paul Schrader and Richard Gere worked together on the seminal American Gigolo. Some 40 years after they impressed upon audiences the power of a well-tailored Giorgio Armani suit, the director and star have reteamed for Oh, Canada.

The film, which is premiering in the Cannes Film Festival competition and is being sold out of the fest by Arclight Films and WME Independent, sees Gere play Leonard Fife, a renowned muckraking documentarian who, as he is dealing with a terminal illness, decides to sit for a documentary to tell the truth about his own life story while his wife and longtime filmmaking partner, Emma (Uma Thurman), listens in the wings. The story flashes back to his younger, unmoored self (Jacob Elordi) who stumbles into a career as a documentarian and travels to Canada under the auspices of dodging the Vietnam draft, but is revealed to be running away from even more responsibilities. The story deals with morality, mortality and legacy, and the inherent conflict therein.

The film is based on the book Foregone, by Russell Banks, who also wrote the novel Affliction, which Schrader turned into the 1997 Oscar-nominated Nick Nolte film of the same name. While Schrader was adapting Foregone, Banks became ill and died before the screenplay was completed.

For his part, Gere began working on the film about six months after his father, for whom he had been caretaking, died at 100, an experience that Gere says influenced his performance. “With any work of art, whatever it may be, you just want people to see themselves in it,” Gere tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Specifically, I don’t have any ax to grind; it’s not like people have to be taking this from it or have to be taking that. You want people to see themselves and be open to it.”

Ahead of Cannes, Gere spoke to THR about reteaming with Schrader: “At this point, he makes the movies he wants, and he is very clear about it.”

View the full interview at The Hollywood Reporter.