Review: Fading Gigolo

City Paper grade: C+

Woody Allen very rarely accepts roles in films that he hasn’t had a hand in writing or directing, and when he does they tend to be atypical parts with scripts of questionable attraction. (The last time was in 2000, when he played a wife-murdering New Mexico butcher in Alfonso Arau’s Picking Up the Pieces.) While the character of a rare bookseller turned male pimp would seem to fit that description, Fading Gigolo writer/director/star John Turturro seems to be trying his hardest to write a faux-Woody film — at least in his scenes with Allen. At other times Turturro appears to be a perennial character actor crafting himself a romantic lead, and at others showing off his sensitivity (and a touch of condescension) toward women. The handful of films that Turturro has directed have all been head-scratchingly eccentric, quirky to the point of being ramshackle. Gigolo is no different, with threads of ideas picked up and dropped at the director’s whim. The unlikely plot lurches into gear immediately, with Allen broaching the idea of Turturro prostituting himself in the film’s first dialogue exchange. From there it becomes a profile of New York’s most sensitive whore, with Turturro providing clients like Sharon Stone and Sofia Vergara with more than just sexual fulfillment. Later, he embarks on a wispy romance with a Hasidic widow, igniting the jealousy of her longtime admirer (Liev Schreiber). Turturro’s direction is at its best in the small details, focusing on the tactile, whether in the bedroom, in a florist’s shop or in the touch of fingers on the pages of a book. It’s in the broad strokes where things get fuzzy.