What do you get when you have Woody Allen and John Turturro in a film? You get a wonderful film that's what.
Now the movie takes off with Dr. Parker (played by Sharon Stone) telling her patient Murray (played by Woody Allen) that she wants a menage a trois with her friend Selima (played by Sofia Vergara). She asks Murray if he could refer a willing male to join them. Murray then recommends Fioravante (played by John Turturro) to be that man. Murray then acted as a pimp and charges Dr. Parker for Fioravante's services. It turned out that he has a knack for this service and clients are streaming in courtesy of Murray. With a thriving business they take on trade names, Dan Bongo for Murray while Fioravante is Virgil.
As they say love is not good in prostitution but eventually Virgil fell in love with a jewish Widow Avigal (played by Vanessa Paradis). Their love blossomed until such time that Avigal realized that their relationship could never be. Heartbroken, Virgil then wants to retire but during a brief moment in a cafe with Murray, he meets a beautiful french woman in Loan (played by Loan Chabanol).
First off, you got to watch this movie if you can get your hands on this. Written and directed and starred in by John Turturro, a great actor and here, writer and director. A trivia regarding the great Woody Allen, he mostly does movies where he writes and directs and in this one, he is just an actor. We love Woody Allen's movies and we were skeptical if his performance as an actor would diminish if he was being directed by somebody else. Being a great performer that he is, he is great here as Dan Bongo aka Murray and the whole movie, has a Woody Allen feel to it which we love.
We were glad that John Turturro was able to deliver his best here opposite of Woody Allen and he truly is at par with the great comedian. The duo had great chemistry here making the film a marvel to watch.
Story line is simple. Its about a male prostitute and of course the movie shows him reluctant at first to be one then succeeding scenes with him encountering different women. All these were necessary for character development for both characters of Woody and John. Consider the pacing a smoldering ember, it just a flash fire that dies out as soon as it ignites, but this is a slow burn. Although we have the two here as leads, the movie revolves around a few women here, namely Dr. Parker, Selima and Avigal. Other characters lend their talents as supports were lead by Liev Schreiber, another great actor of our times.
Comedy without slapstick, without the cussing and dissing, this is the comedy that Woody Allen dishes out and we love this kind of comedy. We appreciate the dialogues as it was nicely written by John himself. Lines were witty and the story telling was simple yet endearing. Truly this movie is among our top 10 in our list of favorite movies.
