House of Gucci
Directed by Ridley Scott
Running time: 2hr38 | REVIEWED BY GUY LODGE
Lady Gaga and Adam Driver star in House of Gucci
There’s a tendency in contemporary film viewing to equate great acting with naturalism. If an actor seems convincing as a regular person — or in the case of biopics, closely resembles a real-life figure — and doesn’t overtly appear to be acting, the performance is deemed fully achieved. That’s often true, but what of great acting that looks and feels like acting, that draws on the performer’s own outsize persona, that lands on the screen larger, lusher and more lavish than life? That’s gone slightly out of fashion, and is all the more delicious for its rarity.
House of Gucci is never knowingly underacted, and that’s a good thing. Ridley Scott’s sprawling, soapy, supremely entertaining account of how the Gucci family business gradually lost its family has lurid true-crime storytelling, shiny ‘80s needle-drops and to-die-and-kill-for costumes in every frame — but its chief asset is a cast that knows exactly what degree of too much is just right. Gucci is not a fashion label celebrated for its restraint — to pass its windows this season, for example, is to be ocularly attacked by chaotic florals, feather-duster sleeves and wide-cut mustard velvet — and the actors playing its last namesakes serve up a fittingly gaudy tribute, delivered in faux-Italian accents thicker than marinara sauce. (Blood, in this feuding family, runs far thinner.)
If you’ve been even within striking distance of the internet this year, you’ll know that the star attraction here is Lady Gaga, primped and pouting and giving Sophia Loren levels of smoky stink-eye as Patrizia Reggiani — the spidery working-class climber who married into the dynasty and unravelled it from within. In her first non-musical vehicle, in a role that calls for movie-star magnitude in every aspect from comportment to coiffure, the pop diva proves her Cher-like instincts for taking up space on screen: her Patrizia is no lady, fully gaga, and locks eyes with the camera like she’s about to engage it in combat.
All that, and it’s not even the most extra-extra performance in the film: as family wastrel Paolo Gucci, Jared Leto gives a dizzily inspired show of comic buffoonery, his every line reading an acrobatic act, gleefully unpredictable in the stresses and intonations and wayward vowel sounds of his shameless spicy-meatball delivery. If Adam Driver, as Patrizia’s patrician husband Maurizio, seems sober by comparison, that’s only appropriate. Between his starched-shirt elegance, Leto’s grandly eccentric clowning and Gaga’s Eurotrash glam — not to mention assorted styles of supernova swagger from Al Pacino, Salma Hayek and Jeremy Irons — the film’s palette of performances represents the Gucci family’s very battle over its brand and legacy. Who wins? Nobody, exactly, except the audience, who has been treated to this kind of expensive adult celebrity spectacular all too rarely in cinemas of late. Big is back, baby, and House of Gucci wears it well.
HOUSE OF GUCCI (2021) Written by Becky Johnston, Roberto Bentivegna | Shot by Dariusz Wolski | Edited by Claire Simpson
In cinemas now.
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