The story of Maurizio Gucci’s (Adam Driver) rise and fall has all the ingredients of an epic soap opera, from the glitz and glamour to the infighting, betrayal, and power moves within one of the world’s most illustrious fashion families. We get Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons as the patriarchs of the Gucci family, Rodolfo and Aldo Gucci, respectively, as well as a murder plot that’s planned, albeit poorly, with the help of a television psychic (Salma Hayek). Pity, then, that director Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci rarely embraces melodramatic excess, as this tale of greed and revenge too often resembles a tasteful, straight-laced biopic rather than the tense, overheated crime drama that the material practically begs for.
Only Jared Leto, smothered in layers of gaudy makeup, a ridiculous wig, and sporting an accent certain to raise eyebrows among members of the Italian American Anti-Defamation League, approximates the campy tone needed to inject some life into this 157-minute slog of a film. His Paolo Gucci, ostensibly serving as comic relief as the family’s ambitious yet hopelessly talentless black sheep, feels like he’s in a totally different film than everyone else on screen.
The film begins in 1970 with Maurizio working as a young businessman who’s completely disinterested in the family’s industry of choice, despite the pleading of his father, actor Rodolfo Gucci, who wants his only son to carry on the family’s legacy. Enter Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), who meets Maurizio at a party and falls for him before learning the extent of his family’s riches. And soon after Maurizio and Patrizia meet, it’s Rodolfo’s brother, Aldo, who manages to convince his nephew to work at Gucci and takes him under his wing.
Although Maurizio and Patrizia’s ambitions start off as modest and innocent, they inevitably grow bolder and more power hungry as The House of Gucci progresses. Yet the filmmakers fail to provide the narrative connective tissue necessary to convincingly convey this shift in their desires. Maurizio and Patrizia start off wanting to restore respect to the Gucci brand by stopping production of the cheap knock-offs that Aldo approved in order to pad the company’s profits, and eventually turn more nefarious. But there’s little in the film to explain what drives their transformation into ruthless foes to the uncle who had long treated them so well.
Despite its length, House of Gucci rarely feels epic in scope, either in terms of capturing the breadth of its story’s timeline or in presenting a compelling or even particularly coherent arc to Maurizio and Patrizia’s long, bumpy marriage. There are certainly times where Patrizia’s motives are clearly underhanded, tending to cause more strife within the Gucci family than Maurizio would like, but there are few heated arguments or extended displays of marital tension to even foreshadow a potential divorce, let alone the kind of intensity that would lead to a hit job. One moment they appear to be reasonably happy, and the next he’s off galavanting with another woman (Camille Cottin), ready to leave Patrizia high and dry.
Some of this lack of emotional context stems from the film’s failure to probe Maurizio’s interiority. Though Driver, with his permanently steely gaze, accurately conveys the real-life Maurizio’s sense of calm and restraint, his performance often leaves us on the outside looking in. As for Lady Gaga, while she brings a certain verisimilitude to the role, her straining for complete mimicry results in an aural uncanny valley similar to that of Natalie Portman’s rendition of Jackie Onassis in Pablo Larraín’s Jackie. Most of the blame, though, falls on the script, which fails to present either of the lead actors with fully fleshed out characters, recounting with scant insight how Maurizio and Patrizia’s marriage ended in murder. It’s the cinematic difference between reading a detailed exposé and skimming a WikiPedia page.
For his part, Scott tries to bring some vibrancy to the film via the soundtrack. But the needle drops tend to be either bafflingly out of place, as when George Michael’s “Faith” is heard while Maurizio and Patrizia have their first bout of passionate sex, or maddeningly on the nose given the luxe context of the film, as with the inclusions of David Bowie’s “Fame” and “Fashion.” This former tendency to hew toward the overly literal is ultimately what plagues House of Gucci, which will have audiences leaving theaters knowing all of the facts related to this wild chapter in Gucci history but little understanding of why any of it actually happened.
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