Gaga delivers a tour de force that recalls the glory days of cinema
House of Gucci 15 cert, 158 min ★★★★★
Dir Ridley Scott
Starring Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons, Camille Cottin
Remember when film stars were allowed to wobble? Before the current vogue for cosmetic sculpting and swingeing fitness regimes, when an actor or actress’s image didn’t just come down to their appearance, but their ability to make you feel the heat and ripple of their physical presence? Lady Gaga certainly does – and, in her first screen role since 2018’s A Star is Born, seems to be on a one-woman mission to bring back the glory days.
In House of Gucci, the 35-year-old singer-turned-actress heaves, flails, stews, broods, jiggles and billows with the very best of them, usually in (though sometimes out of ) an impressive range of deafening outfits. In a film set in the world of Italian couture, here is a thrillingly unfashionable performance, harking back to Claudia Cardinale and Sophia Loren in its freeness, wit and sheer carnal chutzpah.
I only wish I could report that Ridley Scott’s new film – the 83-yearold master’s second this year, after October’s The Last Duel – managed to match its lead actress’s pace for its entire two-and-a-half hour duration. But while House of Gucci is never less than watchably raucous, it’s also essentially a soap opera with airs, rambling from episode to episode without ever settling into its stride.
It was adapted by Becky Johnson and Roberto Bentivegna from Sara Gay Forden’s 2001 book of the same name, about the nouveau-riche socialite Patrizia Reggiani (Gaga) and her unlikely and unruly marriage to Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), the one-time heir to the Gucci fortune, who was assassinated on the steps of his Milan office in 1995.
The fact that the major cast members can’t seem to agree on what kind of film they’re actually making is one of its most glaring hitches, and also one of its ripest pleasures. As Maurizio, Driver is operating on roughly the same plane as Gaga: his callow but curious upper-class scion makes a sparky foil for her sexually shrewd, social-climbing bride. (They also share an instantly legendary love scene, in which they go at one another with the tenderness of a hydraulic road drill.)
Meanwhile, as Maurizio’s cadaverous father Rodolfo, Jeremy Irons looks as if he’s shuffled in from a Sunset Boulevard-style noirish chamber piece, while Al Pacino, who plays the chairman of the family business, Rodolfo’s crocodilian brother Aldo, would be more at home in a Scorsese crime epic. Then, as Aldo’s oafish son Paolo, there is Jared Leto, performing with a strap-on paunch, prosthetic nose, jowls and bald patch, and an accent of thickest Dolmio.
His decision to go broad and buffoonish proves astute, especially once the plot becomes bogged down in the financial and artistic tumult the fashion house went through in the 1980s. You can virtually hear the film sigh with relief whenever it gets to park the business side for a moment and swan off to the slopes of Merano or into a cavernous drawing room where Gaga can pace by the fire in a glitterball mini-dress while growling lines like: “It’s time to take out the trash.”
Such scenes feel designed to be whittled into gif-sized chunks and spread on social media – and honestly, the place will be all the richer for it. All in all, House of Gucci might be a little rickety to fully convince. But if they gave out Oscars for memes, it would sweep the board.