by Heath Lynch, Contributing Writer
A combination of strong creative marketing and its spot on the release calendar has House of Gucci arguably positioned as the must-see film event of the fall. It has garnered mass appeal due to its basis on real life events, examination of the rich and the famous, and true crime stories. Beyond that, it was crafted by an acclaimed director, and is headlined by a star-studded and award-winning cast. Unfortunately, House of Gucci flounders in a sea of mediocrity as it is never able to decide if it wants to be a serious drama or an exercise in camp. This lack of identity makes the film unintentionally comical in a negative way, while also slowly killing the audience with boredom.
House of Gucci follows a series of true events transpiring between the early ‘70s all the way to the mid ‘90s. It centers around Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), a social climber who is enamored by the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. She happens to meet Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) at a party. Aftwards, she decides to stalk him, push him into a relationship, and eventually this leads into marriage. However, her ambition does not stop there as she seeks to control the Gucci fashion house in its entirety by pitting family members against one another through efforts of deceit. Maurizio’s father Rodolfo Gucci (Jeremy Irons), his uncle Aldo Gucci (Al Pacino), and cousin Paolo Gucci (Jared Leto) all fall victim to these manipulations. But as power consumes and corrupts Patrizia, it also strains her marriage to Maurizio as he grows to resent what Patrizia has done to his family. It all comes crumbling down when Maurizio files for divorce, exiling Patrizia from the Gucci family and fashion house, prompting Patrizia to do the unimaginable: hire a hitman to assassinate her husband.
If it feels like I’m giving a bit of the game away, my apologies. But we are discussing real life events that happened 30 to 50 years ago. Regrettably, the movie doesn’t delve too deeply into uncharted waters. It is fairly straightforward with its presentation of the events as we already know them to be without much nuance and ability to read between the lines. We are presented mostly with events and conversations that are well-documented. Because of this, much of the film’s potential is linked directly to how the story is told and not the story itself. If you were someone who is unfamiliar with these events, the story will still feel fresh to you regardless. But if you haven’t been living under a rock for the past several decades, you’re already going into this film knowing exactly what’s coming.
This added burden and pressure to deliver a great experience is squarely put on Ridley Scott as the director, and the five main performers from this cast. Ultimately, we are let down by an uneven tone mixed with poor pacing and poor editing throughout the film. Although Scott is definitely a true master of his craft, having delivered multiple works throughout his career that have gone on to define elements of cinema, here he feels woefully inept. The talent that we know he possesses is simply not on display. He is not drawing consistent performances from his actors. He is not capturing the emotional moments in a way that makes them truly impactful to the audience. It’s as though there was some kind of barrier between him and the rest of the production while he was on set that prevented him from being in sync with what’s actually happening in front of the camera. Perhaps this is a symptom of being overworked, as Scott also delivered The Last Duel to cinemas just about two months ago. Regardless, this lack of proper command in his craft led to an unruly circus when it comes to the quality control in this project, especially regarding the actor’s performances.
This is the great crux for whether or not this film will work for you, and as to whether or not this is a good film in general. There’s a disparaging difference between how these actors approached this project and how the project was executed. It’s more notable in some actors versus others, but they all suffer the same symptoms. There’s a massive reliance on campiness throughout this picture. Whether it’s in the line delivery, the physical body language, or the actual lines of dialogue themselves, many of these performances are just absurd and hilarious. You can’t help but laugh. But the picture itself is not on board with this vision. While all the camp is being provided by the actors, the film wants to make the emotional beats devastatingly brutal and true-to-life. On the one hand, we are laughing and joyous, and on the other hand we are somber and dour. This confusion leads us to unfortunately laugh at the wrong moments, dissolving away the credibility that this film desperately seeks to achieve. It’s as if our runway model has slipped and fallen off into the crowd in the middle of the fashion show, and instead of getting back up on the runway and carrying on, they just dance off through the crowd and leave. At what point do we laugh? Do we feel bad that she fell and laugh at her not wanting to finish the job and dancing away? Or, do we laugh at the fact that she fell, and we feel bad that she was so embarrassed that she had to run away and not finish the job?
The main perpetrators behind this confusion are undeniably Gaga and Leto. If you buy into this film being an exercise in camp and cheesiness then you will undoubtedly fall in love with these performances. They are both eccentric and over-the-top, chewing up scenery and dialogue with the best of them. They are particularly noteworthy in scenes where they even bounce off of one another’s energy — scenes that had me and my auditorium bursting out loud with laughter. The trademark “Father, Son, and House of Gucci” line that you’ve seen a million times in the trailer was improved by Gaga during one of these scenes. These two are clearly having a blast in these roles, and Gaga especially is putting forth 100% of her effort to elicit empathy from her performance. She showcases ambition, lust, jealousy, sorrow, and rage so well throughout the film. She truly showcases a wide range of acting prowess.
But as I said, those great campy performances directly clash with the rest of the film and some of the other performances. Driver is playing Maurizio fairly straight-laced. He does a commendable job, but it’s a performance that is certainly at odds with Gaga and Leto. Pacino and Irons straddle the line depending on the scene, only compounding the confusion in tone. Some moments show them as over-the-top and hammy, and others show them as serious dramatic actors — performers who make you feel like you want to cry, not laugh. None of this is helped by the fact that almost everyone seems like they’re playing their role as a caricature, instead of an actual human being. The accents are laughable at times. They are the embodiment of what an American thinks an Italian would sound like. It’s as if everyone decided they were going to play these people knowing that they were in a movie, instead of playing these people as though they were in real life and just happened to be filmed. It makes the whole experience slightly off kilter.
So what do you do when it feels like the director is disengaged from the reins on his own film, and the actors feel much more like they’re at a costume party than in a movie? Well, you really have to rely on the narrative plot and the technical elements. Even that feels like a mixed bag. Some of the technicals are great, such as the cinematography and the costumes. This, of course, is to be expected given that it’s a film about fashion icons. But other elements don’t seem to mix, such as the soundtrack to the movie. Certain scenes and moments are mixed with classic Italian opera, while other scenes are scored with pop tracks that were contemporary at the time between the ‘70s and ‘90s. These needle drops ping-pong back and forth, and never seem to quite fit the scenes that they are a part of. The narrative structure of the story itself is inherently good, but that’s hard to mess up when you’re basing something off of real life events. It was fun to watch things unfold and experience the drama up close and personal. However, even this has its sticking points. Many of the motivations for the characters are entirely unexplored. Patrizia gets the bulk of the run time, and we understand her perspective entirely. We even see where she came to the conclusion that the murder of her husband was the only option. But even Maurizio, our next biggest character, is underdeveloped. He goes from not wanting to be a part of the House of Gucci, and expressly resenting what Patrizia has done to the family, to wanting to be the sole owner of Gucci out of nowhere, with no explanation as to how he got to that point. Almost every character below the line from here suffers the same problem. We understand what they’re doing, but not why.
The details of the events are also incredibly foggy. Most frustratingly, this is intentional. The movie likes to talk at great lengths about who has the majority share of Gucci, and who is trying to take over, or buyout, whose percentage, but they don’t actually explain any of it. I had to go to Wikipedia after the fact to look up who actually had what percentage share of the company so I could correspond that to my memory of what happened throughout the film. I definitely don’t like movies that make me feel like I have an extra homework assignment after the fact to understand what actually happened in the story. I know I will not be the only person that has to go to Wikipedia after this film to understand the nuances of what actually took place.
The last remarkable thing about this movie is its baffling 158 minute long run time. For not taking the time to explain a lot of the character’s proper motivations, or even explaining the details of the narrative plot, it’s borderline malpractice that this movie ended up being so long. I could actively see my theater crowd growing impatient in real time while watching this film. I could see people checking the clocks on their phones, and a couple people even walking out before the credits rolled. This movie about crime and murder simply doesn’t have nearly enough crime and murder in it to maintain an interest level that justifies this run time. Boredom will creep in on you. Tied to this, there’s also inconsistency with the editing, especially around the film’s perception of time. There’s almost no visual difference between the presentation of Patrizia and Maurizio to start the film in the beginning of the ‘70s versus how they look at the end of the film 25 years later in the mid ‘90s. It’s like they haven’t aged a day. In fact, the only real way to understand the passage of time is between the time period specific songs, and by watching their kid grow up. There will literally be scenes where it’s even more confusing as the movie will cut from one scene where their kid is a toddler, and almost the very next scene the kid is in grade school. Years went by in almost a single cut, it’s bizarre. Even the infamous murder that is inevitably going to drive the most people to the theater to see this film is shoehorned in to the last 25 minutes of this film, which is simply astounding. It’s treated almost like a footnote, an afterthought, after the main events of the film which ended up just revolving around an unhappy married couple getting a divorce. I never knew hired assassinations could be so inconsequential to the overall plot of a movie, but here we are.
The audience members who are looking for camp and schlock will find moments that they can surely appreciate. The audience members who are looking for serious dramatic moments will find pieces that they can surely appreciate. There’s potential for everyone to have some fun with this movie. But if either of these audience members want a well-rounded picture where the movie commits to a tone, both of them will end up disappointed because House of Gucci never takes the leap to greatness. This is not a camp movie, this is not a serious drama. It is both, and because of that at the same time, it is neither. The enjoyment I was able to find in this picture is far too often offset by things that I find frustrating. It is a fashion catalog that is resoundingly average and ultimately forgettable. I find myself already just wanting to look past it, looking forward to the rest of the season’s better films.
Grade: C-
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