‘House of Gucci’ is an intriguing exercise in excess – Detroit Free Press
“House of Gucci” is a lot of movie.
Too much movie, probably, though its 2 hour and 37 minutes give audiences plenty of time to savor Lady Gaga’s performance. And to marvel at Jared Leto’s, though for different reasons. Their performances reside at the opposite ends of the over-the-top spectrum. She dives in properly, an inside-out portrayal of a woman whose ambition overtakes her reason.
Leto just goes all-in bonkers, from his appearance to everything else. One of his character’s grand acts of defiance is to urinate on a Gucci scarf. He’s the black sheep of the family, you might say, though there’s competition for the slot.
Yet Leto’s performance is a lot of fun to watch. It just seems as if it belongs in a different movie.
Which is fitting because at times “House of Gucci” seems like a few different movies. For the Gucci family and for director Ridley Scott, too much is never enough isn’t a credo. It’s just a starting point.
Scott’s film, based on Sara Gay Forden’s nonfiction book, follows Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), the daughter of the owner of a trucking company, as a sort of Lady Macbeth of the fashion world.
But it’s less Shakespeare-like than it is the most expensive, most extravagantly cast soap opera ever made. It’s tempting to say the theme here is that power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
This isn’t power, though. This is wealth and the trappings and problems it provides. But not just any wealth (or just any problems). What lies beyond obscene wealth? Absurd? Unimaginable? Homes and apartments and villas all over the world, with a staff arming each one in case you want to jet over to one on a whim.
That kind of wealth.
Patrizia meets Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver, the model of timid restraint at the outset) at a party, mistaking him for a bartender. It’s easy to do. He’s heir to half of the Gucci fortune and couldn’t be less interested in it. He wants to be a lawyer.
And soon after meeting Patrizia, he’s in love. She makes sure of it.
He introduces Patrizia to his father, Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons). The first time we see him, he’s a cold, shriveled-up husk of a man and he deteriorates from there. He thinks Patrizia is a gold digger and, having spent his life surrounded by sycophants and underlings, isn’t afraid to say so. If Maurizio marries Patrizia, he’ll write him out of the will, cut off his finances, never speak to him again, that sort of thing, he thunders.
Fine with me, Maurizio responds. He marries Patrizia in an elaborate setting that Scott captures perfectly, with the groom’s side of the massive cathedral empty with the exception of one couple. Rodolfo is icing out his son.
Maurizio goes to work for Patrizia’s father’s trucking company. It’s fair to say he is not familiar with this kind of work, but he takes to it and wins over the rest of the staff. He is truly happy, he says, for the first time in his life.
But Patrizia is not going to let that fortune go unspent. Aldo (Al Pacino, occasionally channeling Michael Corleone but at others just being Al Pacino), Rodolfo’s brother who owns the other half of the company, reaches out to Maurizio. Patrizia sees an opening and encourages Maurizio to play nice with his uncle.
This sets in motion a story of cascading melodrama as Maurizio works his way back into the fold. Patrizia is a schemer, no doubt. She’s also smart and, as she tells one threat to her power in one of the film’s great lines, she doesn’t consider herself a particularly moral person.
The problem she runs into is that no one else is particularly moral, either. And they’ve been at it a lot longer. I didn’t know I married a monster, she tells Maurizio at one point, more sad than mad. You didn’t, he says. You married a Gucci.
And now, a word about the accents: Lady Gaga has been in the news lately for saying she used Patrizia’s accent for nine months while filming. Her dialogue coach has been, shall we say, cautious in his praise.
But to focus solely on her accent is to miss the point, almost entirely. However good or bad the accents are ultimately isn’t a defining element. The point is, they sound different, not like everyone else. The rich aren’t like you and me, that sort of thing. They’ve got more stuff and sometimes more problems, many of which are self-inflicted and some of which lead to tragedy. It’s like an opera, only different.
Is it a good movie? It’s … a movie. That’s not the slight it sounds like. It’s certainly no masterpiece, though not for lack of a great performance from Lady Gaga. It’s an investment, but watching this cast do these things is worth the price of admission.
‘House of Gucci’
Two stars
out of four stars
Rated R; language, sexual content, brief nudity, violence
2 hours, 38 minutes
In theaters