HOUSE OF GUCCI ½ 2021, R, 157 mins. Lady Gaga as Patrizia Reggiani / Adam Driver as Maurizio Gucci / Jared Leto as Paolo Gucci / Jeremy Irons as Rodolfo Gucci / Al Pacino as Aldo Gucci / Salma Hayek as Giuseppina "Pina" Auriemma / Camille Cottin as Paola Franchi / Jack Huston as Domenico De Sole Directed by Ridley Scott / Written by Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna, based on the book by Sara Gay Forden |
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On paper, HOUSE OF GUCCI should have been a cinematic home run. It boasts the typically authoritative and acclaimed veteran director in Ridley Scott (coming off of a recent career high with THE LAST DUEL) at the helm, and flanking him is a relative smorgasbord of decorated Oscar nominated talent. And on top of that, this true life crime drama focuses on one of the seminal and most recognizable families in the fashion industry in Gucci and the power play struggles that existed between its members that tragically led to one of them being murdered in cold blood and another being sent to prison for it. This all should
have made HOUSE OF GUCCI must-see event film viewing and a qualitative
smash, but after a reasonably enthralling first half, Scott somehow loses
his way with the sheer enormity of the material that might have been best
left for a long form TV mini-series.
That, and its weird tonal inconsistencies and an unavoidable
made-for-TV vibe ultimately hurts what could have been another masterful
turn for the 83-year-old filmmaker. Thankfully, there
are a few saving graces in HOUSE OF GUCCI, namely another solid
performance turn from Lady Gaga, coming off of her lauded work in A
STAR IS BORN. Here
she plays Patrizia Reggiani, and as the film opens in the late 70s we see
working a relatively lowly job for her father's trucking company.
On one fateful night at a local party she meets Maurizio Gucci
(Adam Driver, the film's other solid acting anchor), whom she initially
mistakes for a bartender until she realizes that he's a Gucci and heir to
the entire fashion industry empire. Maurizio
and Patrizia begin dating, and during said time he plainly reveals to her
that his real passion is to become a lawyer and that he has next to no
interest in fashion design or taking over the company when his sickly
father in Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons) finally passes on. He does, however, have a juicy 50 per cent stake in the
company, which plants a seed of interest in Patrizia.
She seems to love this socially awkward young man, but the prospect
of dollar sign looms heavily over her conscience. When Maurizio
takes his new girlfriend to meet his father he appears outwardly polite to
her, but deep down smells a rat. He
sternly warns his son to do whatever he needs to with her and then dump
her. He also definitely warns against marrying what he sees as a
ruthless gold digger. If
Maurizio weds Patrizia, then Rodolfo will cut his son out of his
inheritance. Being blindly in
love, Maurizio exchanges wedding vows with Patrizia against his father's
explicit warnings and ultimatums, and early on they seem like a healthy
and happy couple. Patrizia
does gain a Gucci family ally in Maurizio's Uncle Aldo (a wily, scenery
chewing Al Pacino), who rules over half of the family fortune and
business. When Patrizia becomes pregnant she uses that as leverage to
lure Aldo to her side in a power play move against Rodolfo. Aldo
allows her deeper into the family fold, introducing her to his bumbling
failure of a son in Paolo (an unrecognizable Jared Leto, definitely more
on him later), who wants to be a designer for his family in the worst way
despite not having any talent. Needless
to say, a dying Rodolfo decides to make peace with his estranged son,
elated that he's about to be a father.
He decides to put Maurizio back into his will for that half-stake
in his company, but he forgets to sign legal papers to make it so before
he dies. In swoops the scheming Patrizia, who fakes her dead
father-in-law's signature on the document, and this is just the beginning
of a long series of dark and dirty deeds for this woman as far as this
family is concerned. HOUSE OF GUCCI
should not be mistaken as an accurate historical document, to say the
least. It takes multiple
liberties with Sara Gay Forden's book that chronicled this family and all
of the sordid details that eventually led to (no need for a spoiler
warning here, I guess) Maurizio's assassination.
Changes have been made to time and place for the purposes of
streamlining this family dynasty's story into a mostly manageable film
length. The main focal point
of intrigue here comes from Patrizia coming from mostly humble beginnings
that later married into this unfathomably wealthy family and tried as only
she could to assume some sort of control over its biggest heavy hitters.
One of the bright areas of HOUSE OF GUCCI occurs early on with the
meet-cute between Maurizio and Patrizia, their ensuing relationship and
marriage, and then later her morphing into a cunningly manipulative shark
that wants her piece of the family fortune via any means necessary, even
if it means coercing her trusting husband, falsely becoming friends with
Uncle Aldo and his dim witted nephew, and, yes, committing fraud and
eventually conspiracy for murder. Family
rivalries get predictably heated, which culminated in Maurizio divorcing
his once loving bride, which tragically boiled over to her hiring thugs to
kill her ex-husband in 1995. She
went on to be convicted and was sent to prison for nearly thirty years.
So manic in her delusions of grandeur, she insisted on being
referred to as a "Gucci" during the trial, despite all of her
hellish wrongdoing. The initially
promising and intoxicating screenplay by Becky Johnson and Roberto
Bentivenga makes Maurizio and Patrizio's union one of grand, layered
deceptions and an escalating sensation that only bad things will come of
it. At the center of this is
HOUSE OF GUCCI's two best performances by both Gaga and Driver, who
command tangible heat and chemistry throughout and do an impeccable job of
selling the origins and macabre evolution of this doomed union. Driver (who played a scheming and lecherous French squire to
great effect in Scott's THE LAST DUEL) is also outstanding here in his
mostly low key and understated performance as his Italian fashion
godfather-to-be. I liked how
he played Maurizio as someone that's uncomfortable within his own skin and
place within his family; the last thing he ever wanted to do was run
Gucci, which he tries to displace himself from, that is until he met
Patrizia and the rest, mournfully, is history.
Gaga is the real firecracker foil to the reserved Driver here, who
has a tricky assignment of playing Patrizia early on as a mousy and
awestruck middle class girl that's overwhelmed by the sheer scope of her
involvement with Gucci that then succumbs to becoming a hostile tempered,
ferociously ambitious, and glamour/fortune hunting hound in heels.
Gaga manages to walk a delicate line playing this lecherous woman
that could have descended into high vamp camp, but she's so commandingly
intense in the part that those types of concerns evaporate pretty quickly.
Her turn in HOUSE OF GUCCI proves that her Oscar nominated
performance in A STAR IS BORN was no one-hit-wonder fluke. I also liked both
Irons and Pacino in the supporting roles as the sickly patriarch and
kindly, but naive uncle in this house of cards family empire (Pacino seems
to be having a ball playing the zestful Aldo, an Irons can ooze venomous
spite in his sleep and has a brilliant moment unleashing a sarcastic
verbal assault at his nephew Paolo's complete detachment from reality).
Then there's Leto's Paolo, which
I'll just have to come right out and say that the actor gives one of the
most distracting performances here in many a moon.
Buried under pounds of makeup and what I'm assuming is either a fat
body suit (or his own weight gain) while sporting a cartoonishly broad
Italian accent, Leto is in such aggressive camera mugging/method form that
he unintentionally nearly capsizes the good performance will from the
other actors. That's not to
say that this isn't a compellingly committed piece of performance
immersion, bur rather that Leto doesn't seem have any idea what kind of
film he's occupying. Paolo is
a sad sack and hopelessly incompetent man through and through that's
pathetically driven by making his family respect him, but fails miserably
in the process. This
potentially could have been a fascinating figure of interest here, but
Leto plays him in such maximum overdrive mode that it seems to belong more
in an AUSTIN POWERS-esque comedy than a Ridley Scott crime drama.
Leto has given tour de force performances before, but this isn't it.
He's so woefully over the top here that he not only forgot to dial his
performance down several notches, but he also just threw the dial out and
said to hell with it. Maybe Scott is
partially to blame for Leto's egregious missteps and didn't reign him in
accordingly. It's really
quite odd, seeing as he got such solid performances from most of the rest
of the cast. Further to that,
Scott has a technical field day with HOUSE OF GUCCI and proves - yet
again - that he might be one of the finest directors ever at
transplanting viewers into multiple periods of our recent and distant
past. Very few working
filmmakers have such a stark career variety; last month he quarterbacked a
film that took place in Middle Ages France and now with HOUSE OF GUCCI
he's leading the charge of a crime drama set in high ashion during the 70s
through 90s. That's
impressive. With monumental
assists from Arthur Max's luscious production design and Janny Yate's sumptuous
period costuming, HOUSE OF GUCCI does a remarkable job of encapsulating
the hypnotizingly decadent (and sometimes excruciatingly materialistic)
milieu of this disgustingly rich family.
Scott, as I've always mentioned in my reviews, simply can't make a
bad looking film. He's like a
kid in the proverbial candy store as HOUSE OF GUCCI migrates and jet sets
around from Rome, Milan, New York, and the Alps.
Sadly, some solid
performances, early moments of scripting intrigue, and, yes, a gorgeous
looking film can't make up for HOUSE OF GUCCI's larger missteps.
Scott seems atypically undisciplined when it comes to arriving at a
unifying tone with this dense material.
I think he's aiming for historical verisimilitude, but too much of
his film awkwardly seesaws between lurid soap opera shenanigans (mixed in
with wink-wink camp) and crafting a dark and dreary crime melodrama
that highlights the perversity of Patrizia's multiple sins later in life. Maybe
this all would have worked better as a black comedy (like what I,
TONYA did from a few years back, which also was a crime caper
about a highly dysfunctional family, albeit vastly lower on the economic
and social/cultural scale). The
first half of HOUSE OF GUCCI is generally gripping and shows Scott in
decent command over the material, but that all evaporates quickly in the
film's subsequent acts as Maurizio assumes control of his papa's business
and Patrizia starts maliciously scheming like a madwoman. And for a film that's over two and a half hours, it's pretty
astounding how little of this running time is dished out to Patrizia's
conspiratorial scheme to murder her husband and the trial itself.
It's scandalous that this trial and the aftermath merely gets a few
minutes of attention here, which is followed by obligatory pre-end credit
title cards that explains what happened to everyone.
Like...really? That's it??? HOUSE OF GUCCI has got the look, but very little style and substance. |
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