House of Gucci

There's an excellent 120-minute long movie hidden within the 160-minute long House of Gucci.  Director Ridley Scott has given us an overstuffed movie that is filled with some wonderful performances and moments of brilliance.  With a few more edits, you could easily see this movie being great.  As it stands, it's a movie I can recommend for those performances and those moments, but it also suffers from some tonal shifts and a certain lack of focus.

The movie has been getting a lot of attention for its star turn from Lady Gaga (her first since A Star is Born), and rightly so.  She'll probably get more nominations for her portrayal of Patrizia Reggian, a woman who starts the film off as somewhat of a star-struck innocent, but quickly gets wrapped up in the lavish lifestyle, and turns into a venomous woman who is not below murder to hold onto her lifestyle and status.  Gaga is excellent and commands the screen in every moment, but I also think that not enough attention is being portrayed to some of her male co-stars, including an excellent Adam Driver as her husband, and Al Pacino, who is experiencing a bit of a comeback with The Irishman, and now this.  Oddly, the one performance besides Gaga that is getting notice is the one that seemed a bit off to me, which is Jared Leto, who is unrecognizable as the balding and incompetent Paolo, and gives a rather broad performance here.  It's not bad, and he actually provides some laughs throughout.  It just seems like it belongs in a different movie.

The movie has kind of the same problem.  It doesn't seem to know if it wants to be a camp dark comedy, or a serious look at the real life story of Patrizia's relationship and marriage to Maurizio Gucci (played by Driver).  With a tighter focus and running time, I could see this movie being fully engaging.  As it stands, it's engaging for a majority of it, which is why I recommend it, but it also meanders.  The first hour or so is when the film is its strongest, as it explores the early relationship of the two.  They meet at a party in 1978, and it's an instant attraction, where Patrizia starts following Maurizio, and setting up moments where she "accidentally" bumps into him.  At that time, she works for her father's trucking company, while he is studying to be a lawyer, and doesn't seem interested in following the family business of fashion.

Their romance hits a roadblock due to Maurizio's father Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons, effective in a limited role) does not approve of their relationship, and views Patrizia as a gold digger.  However, Maurizio insists on marrying her, and winds up losing his inheritance.  We get some brief scenes where the couple seem truly happy living a fairly simple life together, but they are pulled back into the Gucci fashion empire by Maurizio's Uncle Adolfo (Pacino), who wants Maurizio to take over the business, since he does not trust his idiot son, Paolo (Leto).  This pulls the couple into the glamorous and globe-spanning world of high-end fashion, which Patrizia finds she has a knack for the lifestyle, as well as a ruthless head for business.  This will slowly pull the couple apart, leading to betrayal, a fractured marriage, and ultimately a murder plot.

A tighter focus might have also helped House of Gucci center more squarely on the relationship, since the movie seems to be taking too broad of a focus at times.  As it stands, there are a number of great scenes between Gaga and Driver, especially as we are seeing their relationship and love build.  What is slightly less strong is how the screenplay handles their downward spiral.  It seems like it covers the broad details (he got tired of her controlling and demanding ways, and started cheating on her), but it doesn't really get close enough for us to get involved with how things fell apart.  Instead of zeroing in on the couple's fractured love like it should, the script casts its net broadly, with details about a possible takeover of the company, having to deal with counterfeit Gucci goods being sold on street corners, and corporate backstabbing.  I can understand why these things were included, but it also distracts a little, and maybe could have been tightened so that it doesn't hijack the movie.

What we wind up getting is a movie that largely works, but also could have been a lot better if Scott wasn't trying to cover so much, and if he found a more consistent tone to work with.  There's probably a great dark comedy to be made from this material, and there are definitely moments that seem to be hinting at that.  But, the movie also seems to be confused whether it wants us to laugh at it, or to take it seriously, so it tries different approaches.  This is most notable whenever Jared Leto is on the screen, but there are other moments that don't quite fit.  This is also a movie that kind of drowns itself in details of the time period or the story it's trying to tell, leading to moments that drag now and then.  The movie is always able to correct itself and become engaging again, but with a leaner running time, it probably would not have been such a huge problem.

House of Gucci tells a compelling true-crime story, but it gets sidetracked too much to be labeled as a great movie, or to be seen as one of Scott's stronger films.  And yet, it's filled with so many great performances and individual moments of brilliance that it really should be seen.  This is a movie that works, but constantly seems to be on the verge of truly breaking out and being great.

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