Fading Gigolo

Fading Gigolo is an extremely rare film in which Woody Allen acts but does not direct. In fact, the film's director John Turturro, best known as Pino in Do The Right Thing and Jesus in The Big Lebowski, doesn't have much of a history working with Allen, having only appeared in his films once: a small part in 1986's Hannah and her Sisters. This unlikely coupling apparently only occurred because Turturro and Allen share a barber, a man named Anthony in an NYC East 57th Street barbers called Borgia's.

Its plot concerns a second hand bookstore owner who, faced with the collapse of his business decides to become a gigolo pimping out Turturro's character, Fioravante, a quietly spoken florist. What follows is a sequence of hilarious covert appointments between Fiovarante and his clients, which include Sharon Stone's character, a sexually frustrated wife and a Hassidic mother of six, played by Vanessa Paradis, who, because of her religion, has to cover herself from head to toe during sex. 

This overtly sexual plot is as charming as it is absurd and as endearing as it is grotesque, and it's also a smart way for Allen, beset in the media by controversies over his sex life, to face head on his critics. As always with Allen, he does this with wit and levity, and this film shows him striking a confident pose in the face of his critics, whilst also demonstrating a capacity for self-parody.

Though Fading Gigolo has had mixed reviews, this film offers a great chance to witness in it's burgeoning stages the cinematic relationship between Turturro and Allen, as well as to enjoy a breezy and charming early summer film.