Though not a Woody Allen film sensu stricto, Fading Gigolo could quite easily be mistaken for one, and not just because the man appears as co-star.

Here John Turturro has been heavily influenced by Allen, from the dialogue (all stutters and schlemiels) to the assumption of the writer-director-actor role. Some degree of self-indulgence is perhaps an inevitable consequence of that latter unholy trifecta; certainly that might explain what is by all accounts a preposterous plot, in which beautiful women are willing to pay Turturro’s character for his sexual services.

Incredulity aside, a film like this lives or dies on its dialogue, and Turturro’s is far too hit-and-miss to carry 90 minutes. There are some wonderful lines, almost universally delivered by Allen, but just as many fall flat. Fading Gigolo’s disjointed plot occasionally promises something more substantial, most notably when Vanessa Paradis enters as a repressed Hasidic widow. Any and all emotional heft is attributable to Paradis’ mesmerising performance: by turns vulnerable, icy, playful, she is the best part of this film by some margin. It’s a shame that Turturro, fine actor that he is, chose to make Fading Gigolo a vanity project because one feels that with a more even approach to direction and dialogue it could have been something far superior. Instead, this middle-aged male fantasy is as lukewarm as it is ludicrous.

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