House of Gucci Movie Review: The OG Gucci gang

A still from House of Gucci

House of Gucci
A: True crime/ drama
Dir: Ridley Scott
Cast: Lady Gaga, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, Salma Hayek
Rating: 3.5/5

There is a scene smack dab in the middle of Ridley Scott's tragicomic new film House of Gucci in which Pina Auriemma (Salma Hayek), a Neapolitan psychic and Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), shrewd and sharp-tongued wife of Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), discuss takeover strategy and style. "Always have something red on you for protection and wear more green; green is for cleansing," Auriemma counsels. To which Reggiani raises the side of the hand and in a classic sweeping Italian gesture asserts, "Green does not go with my lipstick!" Auriemma's comeback: "Change your lipstick. You're already so beautiful or wear green underwear."

House of Gucci offers a series of superbly plotted scenes like these, along with a few big laughs that thankfully outweigh the film's slight tang of twisted dysfunctional family dynamics, and one very barbed truth: the control of financial conglomerates over fashion houses.

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Based on Sara Gay Foreden's eponymous book published in 2000, the movie adaptation is a soap-operatic tale of familial corruption and sexual jealously. In short, it's about the OG Gucci gang. The movie begins by introducing the older generation of Gucci brothers; Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons) and Aldo (Al Pacino) but quickly trundles focus on Maurizio (Driver), whose murder by his estranged wife, Patrizia is the busy heart of this drama. So much so that the movie mellows out and roars most when Gaga's Patrizia is on screen, particularly when the movie lurches into her brand of snarky camp clothed in logos.

That said, the story is about the knotty relations that fathers and sons share - Rodolfo and Maurizio, Aldo and Paolo (Jared Leto). Maurizio, a law student, imagines a simple life away from the Gucci spangles and shine while Paolo fancies himself as fashion genius. In all fairness, Paolo's penchant for dressing fluidly - read "pastels and browns", retro suits and gaudy tracksuits - might have cracked the alternative dressing code long before it became a byword for generation Z.

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The plot develops when Maurizio meets Patrizia at a disco party circa 1970. She seems content to work as a secretary at her father's trucking company but that lasts until Maurizio halfheartedly lets out his last name - Gucci. Thereon begins the making of a carefully crafted plan to become Mrs Patrizia Gucci, which she pulls off while also succeeding to thaw the icy Rodolfo who clearly sees her as a gold digger.

Elsewhere, uncle Aldo manages the New York arm of business, while also schmoozing Sophia Loren and Japanese wallets. It's around this time that Gucci had suffered losses from cheap, over-distributed goods, which Patrizia finds out accidentally and confronts Aldo. "They are not fakes. They are replicas," he admonishes her. It takes a certain thesp grandstanding of Pacino to deliver lines like: "Quality is for the rich. If a Long Island housewife wants to live with the illusion that she is a Gucci customer, why not?"

Patrizia calling Maurizio a "cretin" is when we start to really start to see the cracks in the happy marriage, followed by his infidelity and the resulting divorce. So determined is Patrizia to retain control over the Gucci name that she plans a murder with her fortuneteller friend, ciao Auriemma. Is it the worst of clichés? Sure. But it's also the most humbling kind of life-affirmation when the audiences with regular incomes buy a ticket to watch this real-life story of a heritage luxury Italian brand.

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