Lady Gaga plays Patrizia Reggiani as a woman without a family who decides to build one out of the Guccis. That decision sets the whole film in motion. The movie runs 158 minutes, and it wants to hold all of Reggiani’s rise, her marriage to Maurizio Gucci, her feud with the rest of the family, and her final act of violence inside one frame. It mostly succeeds, though the middle sections drag and the tone shifts without warning.
Trailer, via Amazon MGM Studios.
Patrizia’s Rise
Reggiani starts as an office worker in her father’s small trucking business. She meets Maurizio at a party and pursues him until he agrees to marry her. Her father warns her against her, and she pushes back against every obstacle. Her ambition is the engine of the story, and Gaga sells it with a force that carries the film’s first hour.
The supporting cast gives her plenty of room to push against. Al Pacino plays Aldo Gucci, the uncle who takes Patrizia under his wing even as she schemes against him. Jared Leto plays Paolo, Aldo’s son, whose designs on the family business Patrizia tries to use to her advantage. Adam Driver plays Maurizio, who is more interested in his studies than in his family’s fortune, and Gaga’s scenes with him crackle with tension.
The Family’s Fall
The film tracks the slow destruction of the Gucci name from the inside. Patrizia forges Rodolfo’s signature on his will to secure a share of the company. She fights with Aldo over cheap knockoff sales and hires a psychic named Pina to guide her manipulation of Maurizio. The plot moves fast once it gets going, but the pacing falters in the middle stretch, where the film loses focus and drifts between flashbacks and present-day scenes without always making the switch clear.
Salma Hayek plays Pina Auriemma, the psychic who advises Patrizia, and her presence adds a layer of darkness to the story. Jeremy Irons plays Rodolfo Gucci, the patriarch who disinherits Maurizio before changing his mind, and his performance grounds the film’s excess in something close to tragedy. The film gathers momentum again toward the end, when the stakes finally catch up to the scale of the ambition.
What Works, What Doesn’t
The film’s strongest moments come when it commits fully to the story’s own absurdity. When it tries to be both a family saga and a thriller, it stumbles. The editing jumps between timelines without enough care, and the tone shifts between melodrama and satire without landing either way.
“A legacy worth killing for.”
That tagline promises a story about power and inheritance, and the film delivers parts of it. It is at its best when Gaga lets go of restraint and lets Patrizia become exactly what the tagline suggests she would be willing to kill for. The film’s weakest moments come when it tries to explain the why behind the killing, and the logic stalls.
The cast is uniformly excellent, and the film is at its best when it trusts them to carry the story rather than spelling everything out on screen. Gaga’s performance anchors the film, and the supporting cast gives her plenty of room to push against.
House of Gucci is a film about a family undone by greed, and it is at its core a story about the cost of ambition. The film is not perfect, but it is often compelling, and Lady Gaga’s central performance makes it worth seeing.
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