Fading Gigolo is a film in
which a soon to be impoverished man, Murray (Woody Allen), suggests to his
friend Fioravante (John Turturro) that he become a gigolo, since Murray has
already found some clients willing to use such services (Sharon Stone and Sofía
Vergara). Fading Gigolo is not even nearly believable, but it is clear
that this is not some kind of ballsy defiance of story-centric American cinema
though less clear whether it is extreme narcissism or just simply unfocussed,
unsure filmmaking.
There is also a storyline
involving Fioravante’s burgeoning love affair with the widow of a Hassidic
Rabbi, Avigal (Vanessa Paradis, playing the widow, not the rabbi). Fioravante
brings Avigal out of her shell, but their relationship becomes complicated when
Dovi (Liev Schreiber), who works for Shomrim, a civilian neighbourhood watch
group, and who himself loves Avigal, begins to investigate Fioravante.
Fading Gigolo suggests
first of all that Sharon Stone and Sofía Vergara would need to pay for sex.
Then it suggests that they would willingly pay rather a large sum for sex with
John Turturro – which is more odd since Turturro wrote it. This wasn’t such a
problem since other films require a much greater stretching of one’s sense of
disbelief – Spiderman, for instance. This isn’t a particularly
overwhelming problem and it is easy to ignore if one decides not to be bothered
by it. Indeed, this degree of male wish fulfilment is something of a staple in
American comedies anyway, as Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and, even, Woody Allen
films show.
The real problem with the film as
far as its storyline is concerned is that it doesn’t seem planned in any way.
In the opening moments, characters are introduced badly – as if Turturro’s main
concern was avoiding bad exposition. Two characters (presumably Avigal’s
children) are introduced without any context whatsoever – they don’t even seem
to be in the same room as the action of the previous scene and they say nothing
that suggests who they are or what their connection is with the rest of the
film. Indeed, it takes a long time for Avigal’s role in the film to become
clear and even then it seems unsure. Avigal visits Fioravante, presumably to
use his services since Murray has set up the meeting, but all of a sudden it
turns out she is only there for a massage, which Fioravante seems to have been
expecting and is also fully capable of providing. Soon after they are in love.
But it doesn’t seem to make any sense and it certainly doesn’t bare any
relation to the whole ‘Fioravante as gigolo’ storyline. On top of that, Dovi
never properly investigates Fioravante and he never finds out that he is a
gigolo and neither does Avigal, so it all seems to go nowhere. Instead, Murray
is investigated, arrested and tried but by then Turturro has introduced a whole
new character (played by Bob Balaban) to sort everything out. Then Avigal
declares her love for Dovi, without any prior indication that she even liked
him and despite all of his rather unsavoury actions. Fading Gigolo feels
like it never had more than one draft, the result of a writing exercise in
which two outlandish and incompatible storylines are given and the writer has
to make do as well as he might – one used, presumably, to teach them that there
are limits to their abilities, a lesson John Turturro may not have appreciated.
All of that said however, Fading
Gigolo is a comedy and since when did comedies have to make sense. Airplane
and Monty Python and the Holy Grail certainly don’t. But both of
those films are funny and Fading Gigolo isn’t – not once. The primary
focus (initially at least) of the film is on the comedy between Fioravante and
Murray, which is good but a little too much like a cheap Woody Allen imitation
than the real thing. Casting Woody Allen here is a coup, but it doesn’t really
work in the film’s favour since it only invites comparison to films that are
much better. There is a secondary focus on Fioravante’s squeamishness about
being a gigolo, although this is dropped almost immediately during his first
encounter with Sharon Stone’s Dr Parker. All of a sudden, Fioravante is surprisingly
good at being value for money. In fact, he’s suddenly an expert – hardly a
fading gigolo at all. Then, Turturro decides that Fading Gigolo is a
romantic film after all and he drops these scenes for a New York-advertising,
sensual kind of filmmaking that is at odds with all of what has come before.
The aforementioned massage scene goes on for much, much longer than it really
needs to. And just as before Fioravante had suddenly become an expert gigolo,
now he just as suddenly becomes an expert masseuse and an expert cook – neither
skill established earlier in the film. It is hard not to wonder if the whole
thing isn’t just some kind of vanity project from John Turturro, who just
wanted to make a film in which he starred as a hyper-capable, incredibly
knowledgeable and extremely cultured romantic lead, who gets to have all sorts
of love scenes with a variety of attractive actresses.
Fading Gigolo doesn’t
make much sense and it is laughably narcissistic in a way that could be
forgiven if it wasn’t so unashamedly so. But its major crime is that it isn’t
funny when it really could have been. It is a film of wasted potential, with an
awkward, lazy tone and no fully developed characters.
