An important thing to tell yourself over and over again — much like morning affirmations for those needing a self-esteem boost — as you make your way into the theater for Ridley Scott’s amazingly fun House of Gucci over this Thanksgiving weekend is “I am not watching a crime epic. I am not watching especially serious cinema. I will have the most fun for the next three hours if I know that this film is pretty much a comedy.” Sure, it’s not the Bene Gesserit litany, but in this case, it’s serious-mindedness that is the mind-killer. You might have already expected this, at least somewhat, from the advertising, as no film that contains the line “Father. Son. House of Gucci.” can be fully dirge-like, but the intentional camp of it all, especially with a sober stylist like Scott behind the camera and the make-up of the film’s cast, may come totally unexpected. It is a three-hour hoot, which takes the fashion industry about as seriously as it should be: The clothes themselves are stylish and sported well by attractive and interesting people but beyond that? Everything else is ridiculous, with the false sense of solemnity provided by wealth and status stripped away to reveal the silliness of the telenovela-style familial warfare that defined the final years of the Gucci line’s control of The Gucci Line, which ultimately had a body count.
House of Gucci spans several decades in the tumultuous lives of Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), the bombshell daughter of a garbage-disposal service magnate, and Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), unpretentious heir to the fortune of Roldofo Gucci (Jeremy Irons, who makes the most of his limited screen time with style), his depressed and dying father. The two meet one night at a party, in which Patrizia becomes enamored, for one reason or another, with Maurizio, and she essentially stalks him so that she can get a second date. Following a courtship, Maurizio introduces her to his father, who is pleased enough with the girl but thinks he’s well below his son’s station, and the pair have a falling-out. Maurizio goes to work for Patrizia’s father, washing the garbage truck fleet that he owns, and the pair wind up getting married. Interestingly, Maurizio’s never been happier: He can finally be his own man, free of the pretensions of his name, and it seems that his wife is as well. End the story right there, and you have a Siddartha-esque tale of a man shedding his wealth for truth and being rewarded with love.
But these kinds of stories don’t end like that, of course, and everything’s put on a path to ruin with Aldo Gucci (Al Pacino), the boisterous chairman of the family business, arrives in Italy and invites the pair to his birthday party. It’s there that Aldo begins grooming Maurizio for a role within the company, given that his own son, Paolo (Jared Leto), is a dumbass, and Aldo does so with his subtle charms and by giving lavish gifts to Patrizia, and she becomes delighted with the idea of her and her husband being in control of the company. Maurizio’s not quite sure what he wants: he’s happy enough as it is, but he sees how much she wants this for them, and so he takes his uncle up on his offer. Then Roldofo passes away, and the couple ends up with half of the company’s shares in the inheritance they receive. At that point, they make their move, and set in motion a plot that will bring the brand into the new era of style, but, in the process, they will also destroy both their marriage and the Guccis’ involvement with their own company.
There are times in which Gucci plays like a Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker parody of Italian-American crime cinema, though the entire film could perhaps be considered a gentle and loving riff on the iconic works from directors like Coppola and Scorsese (whose presence is mainly felt through the 80-odd needle drops centered around visual puns here). Indeed, much of the structure of the film’s plot feels directly adapted from The Godfather, where the dissatisfied son of a powerful family returns home from an extended absence and eventually seizes control of the family business, employing ruthlessness in his conquests hitherto unhinted at before being brought low by the unintended consequences of his actions (though, unlike Corleone, Gucci pays the iron price for pissing off his ex-wife). Pacino’s presence only drives home that comparison, given that he’s deliberately cast in a sort of Brando-like elder statesman role, the business-minded old guardian unaccustomed to how one does things in the modern world. He still believes in family and trusts each member unflinchingly, which ultimately brings about his downfall at the hands of Driver and Leto, who gives an all-timer of a fail-son performance. When I alluded to those ZAZ mad-cap parodies above, I’m mainly talking about his work here, which is as if a drunken Chris Walken was told to do his most offensive impression of a middle-aged Italian loser, and it is utterly sublime in its tastelessness. Leto embodies a certain kind of inherent sleaze and despite the pounds of make-up on his body here, it radiates through the fat suit and mixes with the character’s extreme stupidity and lack of style/awareness. There’s a scene between him and Irons, in which Leto wants to show the elder Gucci his fashion concepts, that will likely be GIF-worthy material in the months to come.
As far as the leads are concerned, Driver and Gaga do their best to stay slightly removed from the more sideshow antics of the rest of the ensemble, and the latter’s performance is something truly interesting, given how much she pulls from other, more familiar Italian screen icons for her performance. There are shades of Fellini’s supporting women, with a Sophia Loren-style sultriness tossed in there for good measure, and it makes her character hard to read at times, which endows her work with an interesting dynamism. So many of Reggiani’s motivations are shrouded in mystery — did she always love her husband, or did she simply want to climb a social ladder and gain all the benefits that would come from being associated with the Gucci name? — and Scott and Gaga both provide evidence for both, making plausible readings possible for either possibility. Her descent into a fortune-teller (who is played with an amusing earnestness by Salma Hayek) assisted depression following Gucci’s attempts to divorce her is both tragic and very funny, with her Hayek-assisted dealings with the hitmen ultimately responsible for ending her husband’s life echoing the performances of similarly-moneyed assholes like Jordan Belfort in Wolf of Wall Street. Driver, on the other hand, is mostly the straight man for the film’s first half before the money monster consumes him, and likewise, the changes in his character are similarly left up to interpretation and are shrouded in doubt, but when he finally rises up and becomes a true-blue asshole, his power-plays with Gaga are amusing in their own right, such as when, during their final shared Christmas together, gives her a Bloomingdale’s gift card as a fuck-you to her.
I’m sure there will be lots of debate about whether or not this high-camp approach was the right one for a true-crime tale that ultimately resulted in a murder, but let’s not pretend that it is without precedent. Indeed, the only thing separating this from a Ryan Murphy American Crime Story series is Scott’s steely artistry, with his formal filmmaking rigor contrasting delightfully with the buffoonery from the cast. One can’t help but wonder what his brother Tony might have done with this story if he were still living, but that’s impossible to know and only detracts from the impressive nature of his feats here, yet Tony’s style has influenced a number of other true-crime related cinematic masterworks, like Michael Bay’s phenomenal Pain & Gain. For whatever reason (hint: Money), questions of responsibility and the appropriate nature of depicting real-life violent crimes don’t seem to be asked when one is focused on the plight of a bunch of ‘roided-out losers looking to make cash in a tough spot, but as soon as one focuses on a brand as big as Gucci, we become a populace stacked to the gills with amateur-hour ethicists. What’s there still to protect? A name? A valuation? If House of Gucci is about any one thing, it’s about how hollow and empty modern branding truly really is, where values and relationships are shed over time to make way for the money men to conquest, as they search for capital from the desperate and cash-strapped formerly wealthy in order to complete their Visgoth-like raids of semi-honorable former enterprises. Call it the sacking of Florence, if you wish.