There’s exactly one person who understands at what volume and pitch House of Gucci should be operating, and that’s Stefani Germanotta/Lady Gaga. She plays Patrizia Reggiani, who married into the legendary fashion house in the early 1970s and became an instrumental—and eventually criminal—force within the family business. As she already proved in 2018’s A Star is Born, Gaga has the goods—an affinity for the camera, especially those eyes—and here she delivers a deliciously entertaining performance as a smart, ambitious woman who sees an opportunity (Adam Driver’s demure scion, Maurizio Gucci) and maneuvers him through a corporate-familial labyrinth to a place of obscene prominence, power, and wealth. She’s like Lady Macbeth in a blood-red ski outfit (complete with Salma Hayek’s tarot reader as her spell-casting witch). Without ever losing the humanity of the character, Germanotta has a number of wildly amusing moments that turn entirely on a flash of her eyes or the clink of an espresso cup—to say nothing of her off-the-leash accent. She’s fun, but never silly; at the end of the day, she’s taking this seriously. Nothing else in the movie is able to walk the same glitzy, gaudy tightrope. As an incompetent Gucci cousin, a nearly unrecognizable Jared Leto wants you to know he means to be a hoot, delivering his accent as if it were a punchline. In the other direction, Driver delivers one of his dullest performances, stuck in a straight part that’s all foil for Germanotta until an unconvincing, third-act turn toward villainy. Director Ridley Scott and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski lacquer things with the right sheen—and the outfits and hairstyles, if nothing else, will keep you awake for the nearly three-hour running time—but House of Gucci’s promise as a campy, fact-based crime melodrama is only realized when Germanotta is running the show.
(11/22/2021)
