Stone pays for sex in Fading Gigolo

“BARE skin is beautiful. I don’t think God was in the clothing business,” chimes Sharon Stone as she explains why she thinks arguments criticising the amount of nudity on screen are invalid. “I don’t think that Hollywood is obsessed with sex. I think that it’s ridiculous to pretend that everyone isn’t obsessed with sex. Isn’t it every 20 seconds that we think about sex? If we didn’t have sex, there wouldn’t be a future. I think there is a reason that we are obsessed with sex, it’s creativity. It’s the way that God made it.”

Ever since the actress uncrossed her legs in Basic Instinct she’s been the epitome of sexiness. This remains true even as she has started taken on mother roles such as playing Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace’s disciplinarian mum Dorothy Boreman in Lovelace. Her new film Fading Gigolo sees her paying for sex.

“It’s intriguing that I came to Fading Gigolo and play a character, Dr Parker, who is interested in sex, having just starred in Lovelace,” she says. “Dr Parker is repressed and is freed... from her repression.”

In Fading Gigolo Stone plays frustrated married dermatologist Dr Parker. Frustrated and bored, she satisfies her sexual craving by asking cash-strapped bookstore owner Murray, played by Woody Allen, to act as her pimp. Murray enlists his reluctant florist friend Fioravante, essayed by the film’s writer, director and star John Turturro, to step in as an unlikely Don Juan.

Starring: Sharon Stone, Woody Allen, John Turturro Rated: M Showing: The Strand

Initially the action toys with gender roles and stereotypes. Stone’s Dr Parker pays for sex to alleviate domestic boredom and then enlists the lothario to take part in a threesome with her best friend Selima, played by Columbian Modern Family star Sofia Vergara.

But for romantic Fioravante, as his business booms, the cloud that seems to live above his pate darkens.

Stone, a convert to Buddhism, believes that there is a need for men to feel guilt. “I think shame was invented by a man,” she states. “It’s a manipulation of the human spirit.”

Fading Gigolo also offers up the curiosity of giving Stone - at her third go - a chance to have meaningful on-screen dialogue with Allen.

In 1980, the New York neurotic gave Stone her first break in the movies with a minor silent role in Stardust Memories. She plays a blonde seen on a train who blows a Marilyn Monroe-esque kiss in the direction of Allen’s Sandy Bates. She also appeared briefly in an uncredited role playing Allen’s wife in Picking up the Pieces in 2000, which was the last time Allen acted as a character in a movie that he himself did not direct.

—The Independent

Gugu Mabatha-Raw, Matthew Goode

PG

The Strand