‘House of Gucci’ Bluray Review: Ambitious Biographical Drama Doesn’t Quite Deliver Expected Thrills

This Lady Gaga-fronted historical drama about the real-life murder of Gucci fashion house head Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) by his ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani had all the elements of an excellent film. Beautiful locations and sets, lavish costuming, an all-star cast, and an iconic director in Ridley Scott at the helm. What could go wrong? Well, this almost three-hour-long movie never really goes anywhere. It begins to crumble under its own ambition as scenes become stale and repetitive, and the actors felt handicapped from the start having to deliver stale dialogue in forced Italian accents.

This concept could have had an amazing sky-high rise and rock-bottom fall for Patrizia like that of Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, with some palpable inter-family tension brought in à la Succession, and gorgeous visuals with its grounding in the world of fashion. However, the result is just a flat, formulaic piece that didn’t leave much impact upon its conclusion.

The color of the film is especially jarring, with a lot of the vibrancy of the Italian locales and the character’s excellent costumes becoming completely sterilized into a dull grey/white tone. Plus for every one beautiful scene showing our characters in the Italian countryside, biking on the gorgeous streets of Milan, or skiing in Switzerland, there were two claustrophobic dialogue scenes around restaurant tables and in dull board rooms.

The film feels rushed from its first frame, with Lady Gaga’s Patrizia and Driver’s Maurizio basically falling deeply head-over-heels in love with each other over the span of a brief montage, and then launching into some family drama before the audience ever really develops a desire to root for the two as a couple, or even for Patrizia in her own goals as a protagonist, which are murkily established at the very best. The film could have really shown audiences a disturbingly sympathetic and compelling portrayal of someone pushed to do an unspeakable act against someone they loved, but its pacing left viewers disconnected from everything onscreen.

While Lady Gaga, and other actors playing Gucci family members like Al Pacino, deliver some compelling scenes in isolation, on a whole the movie just meanders through time, and never delivers a real sense of familial conflict that you might get from even one act of one episode of Succession. Jared Leto‘s performance as Paolo Gucci was also entertaining, though his Italian accent occasionally bordered on parody.

All-in-all, this film disappoints through over-promising and under-delivering. Issues with inconsistent accents and the film’s writing hold any of the cast back from a truly stellar performance, and the film’s lack of visual flair is exceptionally jarring given its glamourous subject matter. It would have benefitted from either committing to a campier, more humorous tone or going much darker. This film could have been an absolutely shocking and wild look at an extremely tumultuous time for a highly-established luxury brand, but instead committed the cardinal sin of just being pretty dang boring.