Woody Allen’s presence in John Turturro’s
new movie may represent something like an imprimatur, suggesting that his
influence extends beyond the pictures he himself directs. Presumably filtered through Turturro’s imagination, “Fading Gigolo,” like it or not,
seems very like one or another Woody Allen movie.
The setting, the simple plot and situation, along with an
essential implausibility, should ring some reminiscent bells. Allen plays
Murray, a failed bookseller closing up his business with the help of his
part-time employee, Fioravante (Turturro).
He tells Fioravante that his married dermatologist,
Dr. Parker (Sharon Stone), wants to experience a threesome with her girlfriend,
for which she will pay a thousand dollars; serving as his “manager,” he will
naturally take a cut of the gigolo’s fee.
After a good deal of persuasion, he convinces his friend to
take the job, which initially entails a one-on-one tryout with the doctor. Fioravante performs so well that he soon collects a batch
of clients, apparently through word of mouth, and satisfies them all according
to their wishes and desires. Parker’s girlfriend Selima
(Sofia Vergara), for example, likes her sex rough and decidedly kinky, and the
flexible gigolo kindly cooperates.
The inevitable (and utterly artificial) complications arise
when Fioravante falls in love with Avigal (Vanessa Paradis), the
lovely young widow of a rabbi, which arouses the jealousy of Dovi (Liev Schreiber) the chief
of the Hasidic neighborhood watch. That involvement, innocent and romantic,
leads to a silly comic sequence in which the Hasidim kidnap Murray and try him
in a rabbinical court.
Turturro clutters up the thin plot
with a good deal of extraneous material, including Murray’s unusual domestic
situation, his attempts to teach Avigal’s studious
sons to play baseball, and some glimpses of Hasidic attire and customs, like Avigal’s refusal to shake hands with a strange man or the
rules that require her to wear a wig. Although Turturro
plays the title role, Woody Allen occupies far too much of the picture, even to
the point of weakening whatever emotional potential exists in the character and
his sexual adventures. Unable to develop
the script much beyond its initial premise, Turturro
apparently ran out of ideas and, in the Woody Allen tradition, threw in gags.
Perhaps the greatest problem with the
movie derives from its consistent implausibility. Though rooted in a relatively
authentic representation of ordinary daily life in Brooklyn and Manhattan, it
constructs its action on some preposterous assumptions, the chief of them the
notion that wealthy, beautiful, terrifically desirable women would need to pay
thousands of dollars for sex with a gigolo. It asks the audience to believe
that a young widow perhaps in her 30’s would have six children, some of them
teenagers — and she started late, she tells Fioravante.
Aside from its bevy of lovely women — no longer young, Sharon
Stone still looks sensationally sexy — “Fading Gigolo” of course depends upon
the performances of the two male stars. With slight variations, Woody Allen
generally repeats the roles he’s played in dozens of movies, most of them his
own work. Jumpy, neurotic, garrulous, he plays the feckless Murray pretty much
as if he were playing himself all over again, even using some of his
characteristic catch phrases and reaction shots.
John Turturro, on the other hand,
creates a nice contrast to Allen’s character, playing a soft-spoken,
essentially gentle man who ultimately eases gracefully into his new job,
dancing an acceptable tango with one woman, agreeing to some extreme activity
with another, treating Avigal with a touching
tenderness. In “Fading Gigolo” he demonstrates a passive acting style, a
restraint that suits the movie’s frequent pauses and silences.
The film suggests further instances of the Woody Allen touch,
particularly in its camera work, capturing the look and, more important, the
feel of a couple of neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The soft, not-quite-sepia hues of many of its
establishing shots replicate some of the Allen style in some of his best
pictures, a sort of nostalgia for the present, and a vision that may not
actually exist but remains a distinguishing element in his work. John Turturro may
eventually direct something less derivative and more substantial than “Fading
Gigolo,” but for now, it’s his own version of Woody Allen.
This article appears in May 7-13, 2014.
