Despite the film’s A-list trappings — Ridley Scott directs a cast of Oscar winners and nominees, including Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Jared Leto — “House of Gucci”Most often, it resembles one the 1980s soapy miniseries like “Lace”Or “Scruples,”All about the lust, greed, and murder of the wealthy and famous.
“House of Gucci”The budget was higher than the melodramas. And, honestly, it may have considered giving back some of the generosity and shamelessness of its predecessors. If it weren’t so often dull and tentative, this true-crime tale of the Gucci family losing their fashion empire might have been a camp classic.
Each of the leads seems to be in their own movie. Together, they remind us that “prosciutto”Is it Italian for “ham”Jared Leto plays a Gucci cousin who is thwarted in his design ambitions by several generations of his family. It’s either the best or the worst performance Leto has ever given, possibly both, but either way, it won’t soon be forgotten.
Jump from the time Maurizio Gucci (Driver), is killed to the day he meets PatriziaReggiani (Lady Gaga), at a 1978 disco party. He’s hiding from the dance floor, and she initially mistakes him for a bartender. Patrizia is determined to kill him after she discovers his last name. “accidentally”Running into the law student the following day and eventually winning over her affections. Maurizio’s father Rodolfo (Irons) senses that the young woman is a gold digger and threatens to cut off his son should he marry her.
Maurizio calls Rodolfo’s bluff and marries her anyway, retaining his uncle Aldo (Pacino) as an ally. Aldo and Rodolfo own half of Gucci. This becomes a key plot point. Maurizio goes to work for Patrizia’s father — the film strongly intimates his trucking company is deeply mob-connected — but after Rodolfo dies, Maurizio inherits his half of the business, setting off internecine struggles for power.
As a shark herself, Patrizia can tell that family consigliere Domenico De Sole (Jack Huston) is up to no good, but she’s got troubles of her own when Maurizio leaves her and their daughter so he can move in with mistress Paola Franchi (Camille Cottin, “Stillwater”). So when Patrizia’s psychic advisor Pina (Salma Hayek, who definitely understands what movie she’s in) recommends a couple of hit men, and De Sole brings in designer Tom Ford (Reeve Carney, “Penny Dreadful”) to shake up the house’s stodgy image, the House of Gucci will find itself in the hands of new landlords.
Screenwriters Becky Johnston“Seven Years in Tibet”Roberto Bentivegna (working from Sara Gay Forden’s book,) somehow manage to make couture, wealth, murder seem quite easy. Even as they take liberties with the timeline — Maurizio and Patrizia married in 1972; they had two daughters, not one — there’s not all that much narrative drive. Apart from the occasional discussion of mall stores or bootleg merchandise, the movie never seems particularly interested in how a fashion house works or why the company made itself ripe for takeover, apart from Maurizio’s lavish spending habits. And if it would rather focus on the Guccis than on their titular house, none of the them truly register as real people; the beats of Maurizio and Patrizia’s relationship all play like a soap opera about the miserably wealthy, and Pacino’s and Irons’ caricature-like performances create so much distance that it’s impossible to care about the dissolution of their dynasty.
Harry Gregson-Williams score effectively takes us down the plot’s dark pathways, but the needle-drops tend to be both on the nose and anachronistic. Janty Yates, the costume designer, does a fantastic job making Patrizia stand out.
Perhaps “House of Gucci” should have been a designer impostor itself, going the tawdry roman à clef route rather than tether itself to a true story in which it’s only sort of interested in fully exploring. (“House of Bucci,” perhaps.) Maybe Ridley Scott was a filmmaker who has a greater sense of the absurd and could have created this tale to be full-length. “Dynasty.”Bad taste is sometimes forgiveable and even an asset in the fashion world, but monotony, however, is not.
“House of Gucci”November 24, 2010 in US theatres