John Turturro‘s Fading Gigolo is a gentle, Brooklyn-based, light-touch, indie-romantic fable. It’s a lot quieter and tenderer and less schticky than the trailer indicates. It’s appealing in a burnished, old-fashioned way, and it happens in a realm entirely (and in some ways charmingly) of Turturro’s imagining and making. The atmosphere is one of reverence, nostalgia, dignity, reserve, romance, class, kindness, caring, tradition. Eroticism, trust me, barely pokes through. The big standout element is gap-toothed Vanessa Paradis making her English-language debut. But this American Beauty-influenced poster makes no sense for a movie this discreet. I would go so far as to call it blatantly dishonest.
