Fading Gigolo

John Turturro is one of those quintessential New York character actors of the ‘80s and ‘90s, that most everyone remembers from movies like Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, The Coen Brother’s Barton Fink, Robert Redford’s Quiz Show, and his own directorial début, Mac. But his career as a writer/director has tended towards more theatrical, art-house fare like 1989’s Illuminata, 2005’s Romance & Cigarettes, and 2010’s Passione. With Fading Gigolo, he has returning to a quintessentially New York story and cast as his costar one of New York’s most iconic cinematic storytellers, Woody Allen. The comedy/drama revolves around a fairly average middle-aged guy named Fioravante (Turturro) who’s older, down-on-his-luck friend Murray (Allen) convinces him to become a male prostitute to make some extra money for both of them. The rather sordid premise actually yields a fairly sentimental picture. It helps that Sharon Stone, in yet another terrific mid-career performance, plays Fioravante’s first client. But despite the movie’s effective blending of melancholy with light comedic flourishes, Fading Gigolo lacks narrative and tonal cohesion. We’re not always sure of the various characters’ motivations or how  or how they all fit together  in this story. The cast is impressive though, especially the French singer/actress Vanessa Paradis, who plays an Hasidic widow that captures Fioravante’s heart. The picture is too slight and too muddled to add up to anything especially memorable, but the individual chemistry between Turturro and each of his costars make for a pleasurable enough 90 minutes.