Peter Viney's Blog

Directed by Ridley Scott
Screenplay by Becky Johnston & Robert Bentivegna
Story by Becky Johnston
Based on The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour and Greed by Sarah Gay Forden

2021 / DVD release February 2022 / streaming

MIN CAST
Lady Gaga – Patricia Reggiani
Adam Driver – Maurizio Gucci
Al Pacino – Aldo Gucci, Maurizio’s uncle
Jeremy Irons – Rodolfo Gicci, Maurizio’s father
Jared Leto- Paolo Guci, Aldo’s son
Jack Huston – Domeico De Sole
Salma Hayek – Pina, Patrizia’s psychic
Camille Cottin – Paola Franchi
Florence Andrews – Jenny Gucci, Paolo’s opera singer wife

Gucci. A strongly patterned piece of luggage or handbag seen at airport luxury shops for sale to travellers with lots of money who seen it as a mark of status. Particularly popular in the Far East and Middle East.

I didn’t know anything about the story which is a bonus. It stars, and stars is the only word, Lady Gaga as Patrizia who married into the Gucci family. It is an astonishing, totally compelling major film debut and it’s hard to see how an Oscar could be awarded to anyone else than Lady Gaga in this year, but it was.

WIKIPEDIA (From Wall Street Journal interview)

Gaga explained that she took into account how her long-time friend Tony Bennett feels about Italians being represented in film in terms of crime”, and aspired to “make a real person out of Patrizia, not a caricature.” To achieve that, she studied Reggiani’s vocal cadence and attitude. She explained: “I felt the best way to honor Maurizio and Italians was for my performance to be authentic, from the perspective of a woman. Not an Italian-American woman but an Italian woman.”^[She stayed in character for 18 months, speaking with an accent for nine months during that period. She also ad-libbed many of her lines, including the film’s iconic quote “Father, Son and House of Gucci.”

Accent is an issue. We have to accept that everyone is an Italian speaking in Italian, which is represented by speaking English with an Italian accent. I found My Brilliant Friend more convincing with Italians speaking actual Italian and English subtitles. At university, my girlfriend was half-Italian and I spent much time with her family. I did two speaking tours of Italy a year for a decade. I have Italian friends now. I never felt that the cast actually sounded like Italians speaking English. Normally, this happens in films where the Italian-Americans have a visit from family members from the old country such as Marco and Rodolfo in Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge. Or senior Mafiosi from Sicily in the crime films.

The reason it’s so hard is that real Italians speaking English would import some features of Italian grammar into English, and in pronunciation would have an intrusive final vowel sound. I’ve heard this from distinguished Italian professors of linguistics. But of course they’re NOT supposed to be Italians speaking English. They’re supposed to be Italians speaking Italian. So it’s kind of an invented Italian accent speaking English peppered with Ciao, Grazie, Grazia, Allora but not much else. And real Italians when speaking in English say Hi and Thank you rather than Ciao and Grazie. No one in the film replies to Grazie with an automatic Prego either. Then their English is colloquial and absolutely accurate … because of course they’re speaking their native Italian NOT English. It reminded me of filming in New York years ago. The British sound guy was married to an Italian and spoke Italian at home. On the free Sunday we decided to go for dinner in Little Italy and were greeted with cries of Buongiorno (actually it was mid-evening), signori … and escorted to the table whereupon my companion started replying in Italian. This is when we realized that most Italian-Americans know the words on the menu, basic greetings and please and thank you and nothing else. I heard the same in Italian restaurants in New York and Long Island three or four years ago too. So this was the hybrid we’re hearing on the film. It took me a long time to get used to it. I’m not alone. The Italian actress Francesca De Martini, who worked as a dialogue coach on the film, said the end result sounded more Russian than Italian. I agree.

Though Patrizia (Lady Gaga) has Italian mannerisms, expressions etc down so perfectly that she works best of all. She even has her hair cut like the real Patrizia Reggiani at the end.

On the real story … the timelines differ, and are compressed. In the film, Patrizia has one daughter, not two as in life. The real events start in 1970 when Patrizia met Maurizio, a Gucci heir, and lasted till his murder in 1995. The arrest and trial was 1997. She was released from prison in 2016.

In the film, they meet in 1978. Patrizia works as an office manager for her father’s haulage company. Incidentally,her walk and hip wiggle past the wolf-whistling truck drivers channel Sophia Loren. Incredibly good.

She meets Maurizio (Adam Driver). He is studying to be a lawyer, but she works really hard at seducing him and getting him to propose.

His father the snobbish and intellectual Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons) chucks him out of the family business for marrying her. None of the Guccis attend the wedding, and Maurizio starts working for her father, washing trucks. The energetic bonking scene in the company office dwarfs even the TV series Outlander‘s vigorous couplings.

Patrizia becomes pregnant (which can happen after energetic bonking scenes)and the couple are befriended and promoted into New York society by Uncle Aldo (Al Pacino). Aldo owns the other half of Gucci. Aldo has a thick and obnoxious son, Paolo (Jared Leto). He’s a wannabe designer, and when he shows Rodolfo his designs, the put down is powerful and cruel.

Incidentally a key scene is Aldo’s 70th birthday when they’re reunited with the family, and in the film timeline that seems to be around 1980. Then we see a 71st birthday party. Three or four years pass, and Paolo tells us that Aldo is seventy.

Most of the film then becomes the plot to gain control over the company, orchestrated by Patrizia. She rails against Aldo when she finds out Gucci is involved in the “fake” Gucci black market.

Paolo is treacherous and gives Patrizia proof of Aldo’s tax fiddles and he is arrested.

The trouble is that alerts the tax police to Maurizio, and their house is raided and he flees to Switzerland where they have a villa. Tax was a major issue in Italy around then. They introduced a law where if you were stopped outside a restaurant where you’d dined, and did not have a proper VAT receipt, YOU were fined. This was a clever ploy. It meant customers had to insist on a proper receipt from restaurants, a trade where food spoilage, gratuities etc invited a touch of fiddling the taxes.

Off in Switzerland, Maurizio meets an old flame, Paola (Camille Cottin). Throughout, Patrizia is consulting the celebrity psychic, Pina (Salma Hayek). Patrizia goes to Switzerland but he starts an affair with Paola and orders her back to Milan. Maurizio who was such a nice guy at the beginning, happiest in his life working for the Reggiano haulage company, has become a total bastard. Has she converted him with her plots, or is the intrinisic Gucci just coming out at last?

At this time Maurizio is meeting with investors who want to take over the company. They force Aldo out (and later do the same to Maurizio).

The thwarted Patrizia hires two hitmen to kill Maurizio, with Pina’s aid. They kill him, then we instantly switch to Patrizia on trial for a few seconds, then the end. Final titles point out that no Gucci is now involved with the company or brand.

It finishes REALLY fast, and we see nothing of how she was caught and arrested (it took eighteen months in reality). It’s a long film anyway, two and a half hours, but the race to finish is precipitous.

It didn’t hit well with the critics. We thought Jeremy Irons was doing his template stately version of Jeremy Irons playing an aristocrat. Al Pacino was cheerfully raucous rather than the threatening and powerful figure he does best. Jared Leto had a difficult part, but the script takes him over the top. In the end, it’s truly memorable for Lady Gaga. Brava! She commands the screen every time she appears. Having such a massive number of costume changes helps. She goes from young, confident and sexy to all-powerful Lady Macbeth, to deserted, older and viciously angry. She was nominated for the BAFTAs, Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards as Best Actress (she didn’t win), but not at all for the Academy Awards. I rate her as the Best Actress of the year anyway.