Newport This Week

Gaudy, Glitzy ‘House of Gucci’ is Great Fun



Lady Gaga and Adam Driver ignite the screen in the over-the-top family saga

Lady Gaga and Adam Driver ignite the screen in the over-the-top family saga “House of Gucci,” now in theaters.

Fashion mavens may never look at a Gucci handbag in the same way again after “House of Gucci,” director Ridley Scott’s garish and glitzy soap opera about the notorious Milan family and their empire.

Lady Gaga, who proved her acting chops with “A Star is Born,” leads the A-list cast of America actors, along with Brit Jeremy Irons, all speaking some variation of an Italian accent.

The film at times revels in voyeuristic pleasures at the troubles of the rich and famous; at others, it’s a bombastic tour of 1980s conspicuous consumption set to a pulsating disco beat. It’s all juicy fun, even if the movie’s aspirations fall short of “The Godfather” style tragic saga for the more pedestrian vulgarity of “Dynasty.”

Based on Sara Gay Forden’s 2001 book, “The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed,” the story would be hard to believe if it wasn’t based on a tawdry truelife tale told from the point of view of Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), a 25-year-old social climber who works in the office of her father’s trucking company in Milan.

Loren King is an arts and entertainment writer whose work appears regularly in The Boston Globe and other publications.

Loren King is an arts and entertainment writer whose work appears regularly in The Boston Globe and other publications.

The film opens in 1978 when Patrizia crashes a party at a disco and meets Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), the sweet, awkward scion of the Gucci dynasty. He is charmed by Patrizia’s sincerity and simplicity; she sets her sights on his family’s fortune.

But Maurizio’s father, patriarch Rodolfo (Irons), coldly dismisses Patrizia as a gold-digger. Maurizio marries her anyway, turning his back on the family business and going to law school instead, while taking a job washing the Reggiani’s trucks.

His rejection of money for love makes him a likable character, at least at first. But Patrizia has other plans as she cultivates a bond with the other half of the Gucci name, flamboyant Uncle Aldo (Al Pacino). Aldo is disappointed by his own son, Paulo (an unrecognizable Jared Leto), the Fredo Corleone of the family. Aldo instead courts Maurizio to assume a role in the global Gucci empire, and soon Maurizio likes the power and lavish lifestyle as much as his wife.

Gaga is magnetic onscreen as Patrizia quickly evolves into a cross between Lady Macbeth and Livia Soprano, lusting for greater wealth and power as she plots to cut Paulo and even Aldo out of the picture.

She’s matched by Driver’s more low-key intensity as Maurizio, who turns out to be a back-stabbing schemer living the high life with castles in Switzerland and Milan and, like his uncle, is skirting tax evasion charges.

Scott seems to have let his actors run loose with spotty results. Gaga, Driver and Irons are all solid, but Leto, as the balding, overweight and over-the-top Paulo, an “artist” with little talent or discipline, seems like a “Saturday Night Live” spoof of Fredo in “The Godfather.” Pacino, too, though always watchable, seems to be riffing on many of his recent scenery-chewing performances to the point of unintentional parody.

Maurizio hires unknown Texas designer Tom Ford (Reeve Carney) to revive the Gucci brand as he begins to tire of Patrizia’s paranoia and posturing. He takes up with a cool blonde (Camille Cottin), which sends the spurned Patrizia into a frenzied state of vindictiveness. Her looks become harder; at one point, she could pass for a member of a biker gang. With the help of a psychic (Salma Hayek), she becomes laser focused on revenge.

None of it ends well, which is no surprise. As the palace intrigue mounts, the film begins to flag, especially at two and one-half hours long. It’s not the tragic opera it wants to be, but “House of Gucci” is trashy tabloid fun nonetheless.

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