When Patrizia Reggiani, an outsider from humble beginnings, marries into the Gucci family, her unbridled ambition begins to unravel their legacy and triggers a reckless spiral of betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately…murder.
This movie was sad. In so many ways. Just the idea of a family losing literally everything including their lives with nothing to show for it is depressing.
This movie trots along visually but its tone and characters seem to be in very different movies. As I sat in the Miami theater watching this I couldn’t help but realize one — its length — and two — its pacing. This film covers a number of years but it’s relatively incohesive in the narrative it’s trying to portray. Perhaps that was intentional given how surprising this tale really is but it’s also an interesting way to have told this particular narrative.
Lady Gaga delivers an interesting Russian/Italian accented Patrizia Reggiani, Adam Driver offers a very subdued Maurizio Gucci, Al Pacino brings seemingly fun-loving Aldo Gucci to life, while Jeremy Irons’ Rodolfo Gucci is very staunch and quite honestly the voice of reason for me in this film, plus both Jared Leto and Salma Hayek’s performances stood out the most to me as Paolo Gucci and Pina Auriemma, respectively. They both offered extremely fun, scene-stealing, real reactions to the circumstances in this script. Lastly, Jack Huston’s Domenico De Sole was a worthy adversary in this film which both sides underestimated.
Overall the sad tale of how Ms. Reggiani broke into this family and took everything from them is indeed a wild ride but I’m not sure this treatment was the best version of the story.
