The Doctor’s Diagnosis: B
I’ll start by admitting that I don’t know a damn thing about fashion. For those that know me, this will come as a shocking admission. My attire of flannels and 80s band t-shirts may signify that I’m on the cutting edge of the latest trends, but that is just a façade. Truthfully, I am only aware that Gucci is a clothing brand in the same way that I’m vaguely aware that soccer is a sport. Therefore, I don’t know if anything in this movie is true and I have zero interest in the material. Despite those caveats, I was entertained by House of Gucci. Looking at it strictly as a film, without any sense of the underlying true events, it is a solid historical drama that largely succeeds despite some dry material, a couple of questionable performances and one truly godawful terrible performance.
The lesson of House of Gucci is familiar and straight out of Scorsese’s gangster films: any Italian empire, be it built on clothing or casinos or racketeering, can be swiftly destroyed by one crazy bitch. Adam Driver stars as Maurizio Gucci, heir to the Gucci fashion empire, as he meets and falls in love with Patrizia Reggiani (played by Lady Gaga) in the 1970s. The film then follows their relationship through decades as the family squabbles over control of the company and Patrizia conspires to increase her influence among them. It is basically a family drama that spans multiple decades, structurally similar to The Godfather if the Corleone family were quirky fashion designers and Diane Keaton’s character lost her damn mind.
A better comparison might be Casino (minus the violence) and the film has to walk a fine line between presenting material that is alternatively dry (unless the intricacies of stock takeovers is of particular interest to you) and fucking whacky. I don’t know much about the lifestyle of wealthy fashion barons, but these people are frigging absurd and the film ultimately has a tonal issue as a result. One moment, there will be a board meeting to discuss stock buyouts, followed by Lady Gaga consulting with her psychic (played by Salma Hayek) about the direction of the company. The script and performances are in a constant struggle between camp and drama and the result is an entertaining mess that likely would have worked better if it had simply chosen a side and stuck with it.
That indecisiveness is most apparent in the performances, as some of these people seem to be in completely different films. Adam Driver plays things the most straight and, in the process, delivers both the film’s best and least memorable performance. His portrayal of Maurizio is complex and reserved, showing a man that is reluctant to accept his family’s legacy but also coldly efficient when ultimately accepting that responsibility (to go back to the Godfather comparison, his performance and arc reminds me of Al Pacino’s portrayal of Michael Corleone). Speaking of Pacino, that is not what he’s doing in this. Pacino and Jeremy Irons play the elder statesmen of the family and seem to be in a competition over who can be the weirdest motherfucker in the room (I think that Irons won). They play these men as human cartoons, as embellished versions of an image that’s conjured when one hears the words “old Italian billionaire.” Although they are in contrast to Driver’s more stoic performance, they still have some sense of earnestness to them and leave the film with dignity.
Lady Gaga isn’t a great actress. She’s a great singer and a serviceable actress, but she’s not a great actress and struggles with the arc of her character here. To be fair, it seems like this woman was as mad as a hatter, so it would take some serious chops to pull this off. Gaga just comes up short, as she is able to pull off the earlier scenes quite well, but loses her grasp on the proceedings as Patrizia devolves from being a strong woman to being cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs. By the end of the film, it feels like she is trying to do an impersonation of Lorraine Bracco in the last act of Goodfellas,but lacks Braccoo’s depth and becomes a caricature of an enraged Italian woman. On the other hand, she is a huge Iron Maiden fan, so Gaga is okay in my book.
Jared Leto isn’t okay in my book. Jared Leto needs to get the fuck out of my book. I feel like I’ve asked this question before, but what the fuck is Jared Leto doing in this movie? His performance is so over-the-top and so inappropriate that he single-handedly destroys the film every time that he appears. I often wondered how Adam Driver didn’t stop mid-performance to ask Leto what in the frigging hell he is doing. While Driver thinks he is in a serious drama, Leto thinks that he is in an SNL skit (a modern one, so it isn’t even funny) and is yucking it up to a joke that only he gets. Both Al Pacino and Jared Leto are doing over-the-top interpretations of rich Italian fashion designers, but this shows the difference between one of the greatest actors in the history of film vs. the guy that played The Joker as a pimp that works part-time at Hot Topic. Leto’s early career showed promise with films like Requiem for a Dream and American Psycho, but the man is just insufferable here. I wish he would put 30 Seconds to Mars back together so he could stop giving shitty performances and go back to playing shitty rock music for people that think that Papa Roach is a metal band.
Director Ridley Scott has gotten a lot of shit lately for his late-career choices, but I’m not sure why. Sure, he hasn’t approached the heights of Alien or Blade Runner and he never should have returned to the Alien franchise. But The Martian and All the Money in the World are solid films, the latter being his best work of the last decade (well, I didn’t see The Last Duel, not because of lack of interest but because my local theater barely played it). House of Gucci isn’t nearly as good as All the Money in the World and it suffers from some serious tonal issues and one catastrophically bad performance, but did hold my attention for nearly three hours. That’s quite a feat for a true story when I couldn’t be less interested in the real-life people involved. Or maybe I was just excited to finally see something that isn’t a sequel or reboot or remake. Either way, House of Gucci is a solid enough choice if you are looking for an adult, non-franchise film to watch over the holidays.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Gucci#/media/File:House.of.Gucci.film.jpeg
