All empires inevitably crumble. But not all with such lack of style. House of Gucci is the story of one such fading empire as treachery, betrayal, and greed drive a wedge between the preeminent Italian family fashion business. That wedge is named Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), a commoner from a trucking family who worms her way into the Gucci family after capturing the attention and affection of Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) at a nightclub. A lawyer by trade, Maurizio is not wrapped up with the family business but his romance with Patrizia takes foot and her business aspirations grow so too does his involvement in the Gucci brand’s future. All sense of familial loyalty is thrown by the wayside as ambition turns to avarice and blood becomes the new family currency.
Ridley Scott, one of Hollywood’s most prolific directors, approaches the material with a great sense of the absurd. The machinations of the ultra-rich often makes for spellbinding absurdist comedy (think Succession) and here no amount of glitz, glamour, and wealth can cover up the comorbidity of rot and ineptitude at the center of the Gucci clan. The whole of House of Gucci is played at a very heightened level, the macabre and incompetent inner workings of the family made unexpectedly funnier by a cast that really leans into a farcical approach to accent work. At least by some.
I could spend an entire review running through the accent choices made in House of Gucci but will try to single out the real shining stars. Fattened and bald-capped, Jared Leto’s whispering, whining Paolo is a total hoot. His eyes blood-shot, beseeched by delusions of grandeur and misplaced claims of genius, Leto makes for great comic relief anytime his character waddles into the frame and begins mewing his lines. It’s his strongest, funniest work in some time.
Then there’s Lady Gaga, whose dialect coach publicly razed the star’s take on an Italian accent, saying it sounded more “Russian than Italian” – he’s absolutely correct. She’s great regardless. And then’s there also the notoriously accent-sketchy Al Pacino Al Pacino-screaming in his boisterous version of weary Italian grandpa. Another absolute hoot. When the three of them share scenes together it’s nothing short of a chef’s kiss.
[READ MORE: Our review of ‘A Star is Born‘ starring Lady Gaga]
Based on the book “The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed” from Sara Gay Forden, the script from Becky Johnston (Seven Years in Tibet) and Roberto Bentivenga struggles to shave the story down to its most essential beats. For a movie this needlessly long tedious – House of Gucci clocks in at a weighty 157 minutes – whole acts seem to be missing, which makes the transition across years feel tedious rather than driven and substantial. Pivotal character relationships change and evolve predominantly offscreen. Or by the faintest whiff of temptation. There’s an imbalanced feeling to what is and is not shown, and the sagging middle struggles to maintain momentum precisely by failing to lock into key relationships untethering. Too often fluff is favored over red meat and the flavor is decidedly weakened for it.
The principal cast is hugely entertaining however. Driver offers the most traditional straight man lead role of the bunch while Gaga leans into the character’s manic side – which makes her both impossibly alluring and brimming with danger. Jeremy Irons and Jack Huston as Gucci patriarch Rodolfo and his confidant Domenico De Sole respectively are the prim and proper counterbalance to the mad goings-ons with Aldo (Pacino) and Paolo (Leto). Salma Hayek appears as a morally-composed psychic but her relationship with Patricia doesn’t really get enough backstory to make her role in the Gucci tragedy intelligible. Especially as events get more salacious.
Just as Icarus flew too close to the sun, the tragedy of the Gucci family is a blinding train-wreck that you can see coming from miles away. Paradoxically, avoidable and inevitable. A toxifying agent no doubt, Patrizia turns a once-proud family business into a shell of its former self but the reports of her being the principal offender are greatly overstated, Maurizio himself a more subtle symbol of corruption and cupidity. But House of Gucci misses out on exploring how their relationship changes throughout the years and in doing so leaves major holes in the place of its strongest relationship, one that it works so hard to get us vested in during the effortless first act.
We miss out on the moments where the bond between Patrizia and Maurizio transitions from a steamy romance to a purely transactional relationship and it’s in this absence that the film really buckles. Though it’s not the epic saga of love and loss that the script seems to imagine it is, Scott manages to work the family drama into a comedy of errors that makes for a cheekily entertaining reworking of fact. Disastrous though the end result may be.
CONCLUSION: Ridley Scott delivers a petty crime epic that’s especially interested in melodrama and absurdist comedic beats. Gaga and Driver are strong but Jared Leto as aLittle Lord Fauntleroy in a fat-suit is the movie’s scene-stealing gas.
B-
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