When Patrizia Reggiani, an outsider from humble beginnings, marries into the Gucci family, her unbridled ambition begins to unravel their legacy and triggers a reckless spiral of betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately...murder.
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A woman marries into the powerful fashion dynasty in House of Gucci. Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) is a young woman working at her father’s trucking company, who at a party meets Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), the son of Rodolfo Gucci (Jeremy Irons), who co-owns the Gucci fashion house with his brother Aldo (Al Pacino). Despite his father’s disapproval, and warnings that she might be a gold digger, Maurizio ends up marrying Patrizia and plans to separate himself from his family’s dynasty. However, Aldo, who is disappointed in his incompetent son Paolo (Jared Leto), ends up taking Maurizio under his wing. As Maurizio gains more control over Gucci, Patrizia becomes more controlling of her husband, as she wants him to help secure the fashion label’s future.
House of Gucci is a biopic directed by Ridley Scott, based on the 2001 book “The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed” by Sara Gay Forden. The film depicts the 25 year period between Patrizia Reggiani’s marriage to Maurizio Gucci in the early 1970s to the latter’s murder orchestrated by the former in 1995. During this time, the Gucci fashion house was in a period of transition, with Maurizio progressively moving Gucci away from being a family company to the fashion powerhouse it is today.
House of Gucci is predominantly the story of Patrizia Reggiani and her steady transformation from an enamoured young woman to a cold-hearted Lady Macbeth type. Throughout the course of the film, Patrizia receives spiritual guidance from Pina Auriemma (Salma Hayek), which in many ways feeds Patrizia’s desire for money and power. Patrizia ends up taking credit for Maurizio’s within the Gucci fashion house and she takes it personally when their marriage dissolves.
I am going to be blunt and say that House of Gucci is a 2 hour and 37-minute mess, of which I can’t really decide whether or not Ridley Scott intended this to be a straightforward biopic or a lampoonish satire. From the start, House of Gucci is plagued by the fact that all the stars of the film have put on Italian accents that vary in authenticity. While there has been some criticism that Lady Gaga’s accent sounds more Russian than Italian, the worst offender in the film is Jared Leto, who sounds like he is doing a full-on Super Mario impersonation as the similarly mustachioed Paolo Gucci.
As bad as his performance is, Jared Leto almost becomes the sole reason to see House of Gucci. Everyone else is trying to play this story so straight and then you have this guy in a fatsuit speaking in probably the most stereotypical Italian accent imaginable. Leto as Paolo unintentionally steals the show in House of Gucci and despite being Razzie-levels of bad, he is probably the biggest thing I took away.
On the complete flipside of Jared Leto, is pop singer turned actress Lady Gaga, who is trying really hard to prove that her Oscar-nominated performance in 2018’s A Star is Born wasn’t a fluke. Despite some questions about the authenticity of her accent, I still thought that Lady Gaga was fine enough in the lead role of Patrizia Reggiani, though it is quite unlikely that this will result in a second Best Actress nomination.
Ultimately, House of Gucci is pure Oscar bait that also delves somewhat into lampoonery, which may or may not be intentional.
House of Gucci opens on Wednesday, November 24, 2021
Related Links
Buy the Book on Which House of Gucci is Based
