Oscar season is upon us. And with it, all the prestige productions, lavishly created and promoted with great pomp, not necessarily made for others, as they are made to reap in the Academy’s nominations. The newest such production – Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci.

Inspired by the true story of the Gucci family, the film starts off as a love story, that of Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) and Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), then traverses the three decades of their tumultuous relationship, with its family intrigues and business deals, which come to an end with the assasination of Maurizio.

House of Gucci talks about fashion or the creative part of the creative industry only in passing. Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna’s adaptation of Sara Gay Forden’s eponymous book much rather preoccupies itself with the small political and personal intrigues that lie behind creation, fed by small and petty personal intentions, which oftentimes don’t raise above the level of “I want money” or “I want power”. There is never even the illusion of a grander ideal at play. Of course, Gucci is discussed as a family business, but its members are so disparate, and their relationships so anemic, that it’s hard to construct anything palpable, or anything at all. Or to give potency to the decline of human ideals in the face of capitalistic success.

We’re talking about two hours and forty minutes of an unequal film, which desires too much to be something other than it is, that it simply ends up being nothing at all. By avoiding the common places of a film that is about fashion, the film ends up not being about fashion. By avoiding the common places of a film about the corruption of a shy young man and his transformation into a cool, power-drunk tycoon, the film keeps Maurizio at bay. By avoiding the route of an intimate drama facing a couple that is dissolved by its rapid ascension to fame and money, the film only shows a couple of conversations about the differences in perspective between Maurizio and Patrizia (he is much too kind, timid and disinterested, and she is much too passionate, choleric and has an affinity for illegal activities).

Practically, House of Gucci is an attempt at an epic format of the family melodrama, having the breath of a little biopic in which every element is so scattered about that it’s not clear which of them will attract one’s attention, and what the attention is attracted for. This kind of biopics are heavily based on the metamorphosis of hyper-famous people into other famous people. And around them, an entire aura is created, aided by the press circuit – How did you study the person that you are imitating? How long did it take to put the character’s make-up on? What techniques did you use to stay in character?

This entire transformation of real people into the accessories of an acting process gives a lot of the film’s sensation of being contrived. It’s clear that Scott is making a film that should be focused on actors as they rejoice in roles that are so juicy that they’re almost heart attack-inducing. Roles meant to pass them through all sorts of moods, situations, contexts, enough to rustle through every little corner of one’s actorly toolbox. But if these actors are not working on a common project, their individual successes and failures don’t mean that much.

Gaga plays an Italian woman the way one can see an Italian woman in the movies, passing through all the possible clichés, from Anna Magnani to Sophia Loren, but with gusto. If there is something that is very appreciable about Gaga, it’s her fearlessness of being embarrassing, which truly makes her pleasant to watch in some moments. In others, she is decent. In others, she is so declamatory and lacking in any sort of veracity, that you can’t really understand what is going on. In all of these moments, however, it’s clear that the onus falls onto the fact that it’s Lady Gaga acting, onto a performer that is actively doing something. It’s hard to perceive what you’re seeing on the screen as Patrizia Reggiani doing something, but rather that it’s Lady Gaga pretending to be Patrizzia Reggiani doing something.

This is also mostly the case of Al Pacino (Aldo Gucci, Maurizio’s uncle), who adds a new role to his roster of idiosyncratic parts in which he plays himself. Of course, in a controlled and carefully-dosed manner, not without its (own brand of) naturalness. On the other side of the spectrum, we have Jeremy Irons (Rodolfo Gucci, Maurizio’s father), as if he had jumped out of a fifties-era melodrama, in which he plays someone who seems to have jumped out of the twenties. It’s not precisely bad, but it’s a completely different stylistic in comparison to what Gaga or Pacino are going for.

Adam Driver, as the main, but not central Maurizio Gucci, is very measured in his acting and quite humanely constructs a timid character that is not awkward and anxious, but who is charming despite himself. With sincere smiles, but which are hiding lack of confidence or act as a veil for his character’s passivity, lacking the mannerisms of the flustered, stuttering little men that made him famous. Even so, it’s an acting style that is restrained and contained that nobody else practices in this film.

And what unbalances the film even more (given that it’s anyway teetering on the fine line between being much too serious for what it’s showing and involuntary humor) is Jared Leto. Smeared with prosthetic make-up from head to toe, and armed with the funniest of all the Italian accents in the film, Leto plays the part of comic relief character Paolo Gucci, the family’s black sheep, and turns him into the village idiot in the clearest and most emphatic way imaginable. In this process, he wipes away any trace of immersion or true empathy one could ever have with what is going on in the film.

I am a fan of American cinema. I don’t mind escapism, I respond well to an excess of creative means. To pumping resources in a decadent film, which removes one from reality for a little while to present an exaggerated version of life, full of unlikely colors and wearing its heart on its sleeve. But when such an effort fails, there are few things that are harder to watch, for me, than that particular ilk of American cinema that is self-indulgent and confused.

In any case, House of Gucci oozes the sense of being contrived. Between strident make-up, strident accents and strident lines, there is little space for nuance, subtlety or finesse left to explore in Scott’s family epic. 

Alex Mircioi

Film and theatre critic, sometimes dabbles in theatre-making. Has written and edited texts for Film Menu and Acoperișul de Sticlă, and collaborated with a number of other cultural publications like AperiTIFF, Scena9, All About Romanian Cinema and Film. Desperately in love with female filmmakers and writers, could always go for a queer coming-of-age.