Critics reviews

The preposterousness of this plot marks Fading Gigolo as a vanity project, but it's hard to take Turturro too much to task when he hits so many other grace notes in between blowing his own horn. The script's mix of self-deprecation and narcissism is potent; as in his urban musicalRomance & Cigarettes, the director is going for something guileless and unabashedly passionate, and he gets much closer this time.

Most immediately apparent... is the film's sluggish sense of rhythm. Any snap to the dialogue that does occasionally surface, usually as a result of Allen's energised staccato, is undermined by the counter-productive slink of long-time collaborator Marco Pontecorvo's camera. An elegant romanticism is evidently the idea, but so ham-fisted is its basic visual grammar and behind-the-beat editing, that it effects little more than a droning monotony.

The premise is preposterous and many of the gags are tasteless (like making Allen's character the father of several poor black children), yet the tone is gentle, even elegiac, and the players are surprisingly sensitive. If you're looking for something different, this won't disappoint you.

There is an implicit double standard here that is hard to move past, in the form ofFading Gigolo's surprisingly antiquated subconscious. Repeatedly expressing a longing for a different era, the story emphasizes the purity of its sole genuine romantic interest while incidentally empowering a white male protagonist in his freely expressed sexuality. The backdrop of a New York of yesteryear is nice, but it's easy to mistake being outdated for nostalgic.

..."Fading Gigolo" is a New York story through and through (pace, the jazz experts who know Ammons to be of the Chicago school), often funny, sometimes moving, occasionally goofy as hell. With my objective critic hat on, I have to admit that it's not really a home run, but as an aging urban dweller it hit some notes both antic and plangent for me. If you're a fan of any of the cast members it might well do the same for you.

The influence of Spike Lee, with whom Mr. Turturro has worked repeatedly, shows up early in "Fading Gigolo," notably in the way streets transform into stages on which the diverse characters act out their comedies and dramas. This idea works better in the more intimate scenes, say, of just two people walking and talking, rather than in the busier, more populated scenes that reach for the panoramic.

Once Fading Gigolo finds its way to the tender, impossible relationship between Fioravante and Avigal, it becomes affecting... Trouble is, the route the movie takes to arrive there is so patently absurd, and often so tonally disparate, that it's difficult to take its central love story seriously, which is what Turturro (in his capacity as writer-director) clearly desires.

One client, the delicate Hasidic widow Avigal (Vanessa Paradis), has never been truly romanced, and she blooms in Fioravante's gaze, while her Crown Heights neighborhood patroller (Liev Schreiber, terrific in a tricky part) worries on her behalf, partly out of jealousy. This second film is the keeper: the kind of keenly observed cultural clash that still finds room for dancing, a sultry fish-deboning (you just have to see it) and awakening.

This vulgar and outlandish locker-room tale is written, directed, and performed by John Turturro with such sincerity, relish, heart, and good humor that it almost sneaks through the bullshit filter... Yet Allen, as a sideman, riffs with an adolescent glee, and Turturro, mining stereotypes like a "Broadway Danny Rose" tummler and breaking them with a trivial audacity, moves and gazes with a seductive romantic longing that awaits a solid dramatic vehicle.

Fading Gigolo is intended to be as much about aging as it is about love and sex. Maybe that's why the film often feels like a sex farce played at half-speed, with the more measured pace evoking a sense of pained autumnal reflection. But the weighty solemnity isn't earned by the subject matter, especially with characters who don't seem at all capable of the kind of introspection that might make the film feel as poignant as Turturro clearly wants it to be.

With any other director, this might be the most vain of vanities, but Turturro is the only sensualist American movies have. He's a lover. He loves women. He loves the idea of loving them, too. I don't know whether gigolos are a fantasy for middle-aged women, but if Turturro came a-knocking, you'd surprise yourself by letting him in.

If you can accept the ethnic roundelay, Fading Gigolo is, in its own Martian way, a pretty tender film about loneliness and the need for human connection. And if you can set aside the blithe treatment of sex work or the borderline-offensive caricaturing of the Hasidic community—a scene of Allen being called before a council of rabbis veers into questionable territory—there's a delicacy to the dynamic between Turturro and Paradis that's endearing despite the pairing's ludicrousness.