Fading Gigolo review: a rom-com with a difference

HERE we have a genial, gentle rom-com with a difference from writer-director John Turturro.

Fading Gigolo [M]
Rating: ***
Director: John Turturro (Romance & Cigarettes)
Starring: John Turturro, Woody Allen, Vanessa Paradis, Sharon Stone, Sofia Vergara, Liev Schreiber
Ladies’ man answers a hire calling

HERE we have a genial, gentle rom-com with a difference from writer-director John Turturro.

He also takes the leading role of Fioravante, a newly unemployed bookstore clerk-cum-florist whose love of women blossoms into a job most pantsmen can only ever dream about.

Let’s not dance around the naked facts. Just like Deuce Bigalow before, Fioravante plunges into the world of making lurve to the ladies for money.

Taking bookings and making things more complicated than they really should be is Fioravante’s unofficial pimp, Murray (Woody Allen).

This is a role that Turturro specifically wrote with Allen in mind, and the veteran funnyman was obviously flattered by the offer to act in someone else’s movie for a change.

Actually, Allen responds in kind with one of the better performances of his lengthy career. Fading Gigolo is prone to more than its fair share of contemplative interludes, and it is always Allen that turns up just in a nick of time to bring the daydreaming to a swift halt.

In spite of its risque premise, Fading Gigolo is more concerned with flutters of the heart than matters in the bedroom, and therefore is destined to remain on the right side of accessible throughout.

The true intent of where the story will really be heading is revealed when Fioravante takes on a customer who is not interested in his sexual services at all.

Just the company of a caring, listening human being is enough to satisfy Avigal (Vanessa Paradis), a widow whose love of life has been smothered by her late husband’s strictly orthodox faith.

Turturro’s observational strengths behind the camera come to the fore in establishing and exploring the film’s unusual and lively setting: a small neighbourhood in today’s New York City that shares a spirit of community more akin to that of several generations ago.

The streets are patrolled by a Hasidic Jewish chapter of Neighbourhood Watch, whose leader (Liev Schreiber) takes an interest in discovering why the paths of Fioravante and Avigal are continually crossing.

While a strong supporting cast including Sharon Stone, Sofia Vergara and Bob Balaban make the most of their limited contributions, it is the great casual conversational chemistry shared by Turturro and Allen that should ultimately silence most doubters here.