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Adam Driver and Lady Gaga in Ridley Scott's bizarre House of Gucci, half-pantomime, half true-crime drama |
The film follows the disastrous marriage between Maurizio
Gucci (Adam Driver) and Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga). Patrizia, a ruthlessly
ambitious gold digger, zeroes in on the shy Maurizio, heir to 50% of the Gucci
fashion fortune, and marries him. This is all to the horror of his father
Rudulfo (Jeremy Irons), who (correctly) identifies Patrizia’s ambitions, and
cuts them off. Taken under the wing of Rudolfo’s brother Aldo (Al Pacino),
Patrizia pushes Maurizio into a management role in the company – and down a
slippery slope that will lead to forgery, betrayal and eventually murder.
House of Gucci feels like it might have existed more
comfortably as a ten-part TV drama. It’s essentially a big, brash version of
the Emmy-award winning The People vs. OJ Simpson, but told in about a
quarter of the time. What this basically means is that any subtle character
work and detailed story telling is sacrificed, with the focus firmly on the salacious
and entertaining drama. The overall effect is a swift rush through a story that
becomes a series of sensational, almost comedic, clashes between
larger-than-life personalities squabbling over a huge pot of money. Like Dallas
on the big-screen, it’s all scored with a series of funky pop tunes, adding to
the sense of pantomime.
It’s an odd outing from Scott, with (it felt to me) little
of the individual stylistic touches that he has bought to other projects. In
fact there’s very little of his stamp on it: it’s Scott as professional
craftsman. He and the film feel very confused by the tone. Mostly the film
doubles down on black humour and show-casing big, brash performances. Then it
might acknowledge briefly that there were real victims here, which it wants to
treat with a level of respect. By and large, the film is like a glossy magazine
article, with Scott nudging you as you turn each page and saying “you will not believe
what happened next!”
I suppose House of Gucci probably could have explored
more the personal and emotional hinterlands of its characters. Relationships
shift dramatically from scene-to-scene, with Maurizio and Patrizia’s marriage souring
over-night, for no clear reason. Pre-existing family rivalries and politics
could have been explored more: it’s heavily implied Aldo and Rudolfo are
already engaged in a struggle of ideals (Aldo wants commercial expansion, Rudolfo
to remain an elitist fashion house). Drama could have been made of the attempts
by both brothers to use other members of the family as pawns in this feud. But
then, a film that dived into the psychology of the players might well have
ended up being more about business and less about the entertaining ruthlessness
of the rich and famous.
The performances are wildly different in tone. Lady Gaga
effectively holds the film together as an ambitious woman who is only partially
aware (at first) of what a ruthless gold digger she is. Devoid of any interests
other than being rich (“I’m a people pleaser” she tells Rudolfo when asked what
her interests are), Patrizia is the sort of monster of ambition who would fit
comfortably into an episode of Desperate Housewives. Setting her cap at
Maurizio with a laser-like focus and shafting everyone left, right and centre (although
Gaga does hint at her deeply repressed insecurity) it’s a performance that
walks a fine line between OTT and human. The film has a lot of fun at her
amoral certainty – she sees no problem with forging Rudolfo’s signature on some
vital papers after his death (the film even sets forgery up as Chekhov’s skill
in its opening scenes) and Gaga enjoyably plays the outrage that only someone convinced
they never wrong can feel.
Opposite her, Driver plays Maurizio as a timid, easily
seduced young man, pushed into taking a leading role in a business he has no
real interest in (or aptitude for). Driver is softly spoken – and gives the
most restrained and grounded performance in the film – and frequently meets
another demand from his wife with a chuckle and a reluctant “Patrizia…”. House
of Gucci steps carefully around Maurizio, sometimes playing him as an
innocent abroad, at others as a man corrupted by his wife into a creature of
ambition.
Most of the rest of the cast go for a broad style which,
while fun to watch, only adds to the sense that we aren’t supposed to be taking
anything too seriously. While many of the Gucci family probably were larger-than-life
personalities, I’m not sure they could have been the cartoons they are here.
Irons goes for a waspish Scar-like mastery of the cutting remark. Pacino doubles
down on his shoulder-hunched energy, with added shouting. Hayek gives a
performance that’s a near master-class in Vampish camp, plotting murder from a
mud bath.
Towering above them all is Jared Leto, who seems to be in a film all of his own, with every scene another clip for his “for your consideration” show-reel. Buried under a mountain of latex that transforms him into a clone of Jeffrey Tambor, Leto goes all out as the passionate, ultra-stereotypical-Italian Paolo Gucci, in a performance that’s either a shameless parade of showing off or somewhere near a stroke of genius. It works because, beneath all the hammy exuberance, Leto make’s Paolo a desperately sweet guy, the only real innocent in the film. Leto and Pacino in particular feed off each other – a late scene between the two is hilarious (I’m not sure in the right way, but who can tell what these actors are aiming for sometimes) in its joyful overplaying.
Perhaps joy is the one thing House of Gucci needs a
little bit more on. I wonder how more entertaining again it might have been if
the film had really gone all out on being a camp classic. It shies away from
this, wanting to leave some vestige of respect for the dead and not lose its
true-crime-roots. But, I wonder if a director more suited to this material than
Scott – who struggles to stamp his personality on it – might have done more to
make this into a cult classic.
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