Fading Gigolo (2013)

Jack and I loved this comedy of two friends who team up as a male prostitute and his pimp. John Turturro stars, and wrote and directed it and Woody Allen plays the pimp. This is Turturro's fifth outing as writer/director (I had a love/hate relationship with his third, Romance & Cigarettes, the only other one I've seen, and wrote about it). No ambivalence here. It's absolutely delightful. Turturro (just among his winning or nominated movies, I thoroughly enjoyed Five Corners (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Quiz Show (1994), Grace of My Heart (1996), Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001), O Brother Where Art Thou? (2001), The Good Shepherd (2006), Margot at the Wedding (2007), What Just Happened, and a series arc on Monk, not to mention his work on many Coen Brothers and Spike Lee joints), who had a small part in Allen's Hannah & Her Sisters (1986), clearly learned a thing or two from Allen's best work. We have stunning Manhattan locations, fabulous jazz music--more on that in a moment, luscious horny women, Hasidic Jews, and Allen himself as a wisecracking dirty old man on Zoloft. Sharon Stone (my favorites include her small but memorable part in Irreconcilable Differences (1984), her most famous Basic Instinct (1992), Sliver (1993), Casino (1995) which earned her an Oscar nomination, The Muse (1999), one act of If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000), Broken Flowers (2005), and a series arc on the Showtime series Huff) (and her first credit is "Pretty Girl on train" in Allen's Stardust Memories (1980)) and Sofia Vergara (best known as Gloria on 120 episodes of Modern Family, she has other comedy credits, including Chasing Papi (2003) and Big Trouble (2002)) are perfect tens, with looks, brains, and empathy. Then Vanessa Paradis (Heartbreaker) and Liev Schreiber (last blogged for playing LBJ in The Butler) are the repressed but emotional Hasids. Plenty of other supporting actors, some cameos, and some adorable kids round out the cast. Probably my only complaint is that it wasn't easy to understand some of the names, so I'll print them for you: Turturro's character is named Fioravante (he works in a flower shop and takes a pseudonym halfway through), Vergara's is Selima, Paradis's is Avigal, Schreiber's is Dovi, and Allen's girlfriend's is Othella (an obvious literary reference to their racial difference). Turturro's son Diego, whose mother is Katherine Borowitz (she's uncredited as the "English Lady Newscaster"), plays one of the Hasidic boys, named Shimshon (he's the one with the copious orthodonture).

The rich cinematography is by Marco Pontecorvo (new to me, he has plenty of credits here and in his native Italy). In addition to the extravagant set dressing, the images of the flowers added a lot, too.

The jazz song Canadian Sunset by Eddie Heywood and Norman Gimbel, performed in the movie by tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons (listen here), resonated with me because my big brother Bob played it on the piano when I was very young. Ammons also performs My Romance by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart (here's a track from the same 1960 album, sorry about the ads) and that's a song our mother loved, in a version sung by Ella Fitzgerald. I bought both tracks on iTunes tonight, as well as two short instrumentals by co-composer, with Abraham Laboriel, Bill Maxwell, After the Massage and Meeting in the Park. To round it out I purchased Neph by Trombone Shorty and Sway by Dean Martin. These songs will give you an idea of the underlying tone of this movie.

Haters gotta hate, say Jack and I, as rottentomatoes critics average 56% and audiences 51. Ignore them. We usually do.