‘Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten...’
2021 was a big year for Ridley Scott. The legendary filmmaker released two massive films in the shape of The Last Duel and House of Gucci. Both are period pieces and both of them look beautiful but that is where the similarities end. Where The Last Duel was an ambitious meditation on masculinity with some terrible haircuts, House of Gucci is a more straightforward biopic with some terrible accents. Only one of those movies can be considered a success…
Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) is heir to the Gucci fortune. He falls in love with Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga). Lots of arguments happen. Jared Leto shouts in a terrible Italian accent. Jeremy Irons shouts in a competent Italian accent. Al Pacino shouts in his best Al Pacino voice. And this goes on for over two and a half hours.
Fashion is boring. That’s the first thing to consider. It’s vacuous, unimportant and empty. So, films about fashion also tend to be vacuous, unimportant and empty. And so it comes to pass. This is a dull film that meanders along with stock characters doing stock things. Leto’s ‘performance’ is so bad as to be insulting. His shit show here, coupled with the astonishing failure of Moribus hopefully ensures that he’ll never darken our door again. Lady Gaga fares much better, and is genuinely great in the opening scenes, but her character soon becomes a caricature, and in the end, only Adam Driver comes out of this with any real credit.
House of Gucci is a film with nothing interesting to say and without an interesting way to say it. I admire Scott as a filmmaker, and I genuinely enjoyed The Last Duel, but this is very much a misstep. A deserving flop.