Not only is the role of Murray in Fading Gigolo Woody Allen’s best role – and performance – in decades, the film’s initial scenes crackle with the economy, wit, and simplicity of Allen’s lightest soufflés. Unfortunately, writer and director John Turturro intends a deeper tale than these initial bites of joy suggest, and, stretching the metaphor, the main course has none of the bite of the hors d’oeuvres.
Not only is the role of Murray in Fading Gigolo Woody Allen’s best role – and performance – in decades, the film’s initial scenes crackle with the economy, wit, and simplicity of Allen’s lightest soufflés. Unfortunately, writer and director John Turturro intends a deeper tale than these initial bites of joy suggest, and, stretching the metaphor, the main course has none of the bite of the hors d’oeuvres.
Not that the film is bad, and it certainly has its heart in the right place. Turturro has made the most (early) Woody Allen-esque film since Whatever Works, and he’s hardly ripping the Manhattan Maestro off – the very fact that he’s cast him is wearing his homages on his sleeve. From the style of the credits to the jazz score to the Jew-heavy cast and plot to the sound mix (I’m serious – watch a Woody Allen first scene and then watch the first scene here – the way the dialogue is crisply foregrounded, the lack of foley and incidental noise except for generic New York low-level street noise, the lack of underscore but heavy use of score in transitional scenes – it’s all here) Turturro is making a film in the style of Woody Allen.
Allen always liked a romance, of course, and it’s in the scenes of Turturro’s character Fioravante’s tentative flirtation with widow Orthodox Jewess Avigail (Vanessa Paradis, charming) that things really slow down. In his “light” comedies, Allen always kept the pace up, but here, Turturro seems to want to have his Small Time Crooks and his Sweet and Lowdown too. Allen’s Murray is absent from these scenes, and the loss is felt; he’s the best thing in this bittersweet, beautifully shot, well-acted little fable that is so ephemeral, the taste is gone by the time you leave the cinema. Fading Gigolo is a fading film memory in an instant, but, for Allen devotees, cozy and snug while you suck on it.
CJ Johnson
