In the Flesh: House of Gucci

House of Gucci isn’t an especially memorable film. It’s not offensive, either. Far from it! The movie hits its marks, gets in its little jokes, and then puts itself politely out to pasture after serving its audience a wafer-thin portion of emotional payoff. Its characters are like paper cutouts in a puppet show, every action clearly telegraphed and legible, their inner lives completely absent from the screen. If it gave us something to look at in exchange for this impoverished approach to characterization it might still have found success as a tawdry big-budget soap, but although its cast is strong and committed — Gaga and Driver especially — it remains too insubstantial to be engrossing and too restrained and staid to be titillating.

While the film itself bores, its cast is an assembly of interesting faces and skilled physical acting, from Driver’s stiff, awkward Mauritzio who “dances” by standing in place and swaying very, very slowly to an adorably ever-so-slightly chubby Gaga’s flat, reptilian stare and increasingly outrageous hair. It should be noted here that in thirty years the only thing anyone is going to remember about House of Gucci is how good Lady Gaga’s ass looked. Even Jared Leto, unrecognizable under full facial prosthetics and a fat suit, manages to entertain with his wheezy, whimsical voice and fluttering hands. It’s broad acting, but it’s funny enough to carry a scene. His dressing down at the hands of his uncle Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons) is easily the film’s most entertaining moment, an even-tempered buildup leading to one of the most scathing deliveries of the word “mediocrity” in the history of diction.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about House of Gucci is that the material it springs from is so deliciously trashy. Scott seems to know it, too, toying with Patrizia’s gaudy outfits and declasse way of speaking, hinting at unsavory affairs and ugly family secrets, but whatever his reasons, the film never commits wholeheartedly to its soapy source material. It takes real work to make the story of a woman who conspired with her psychic to have her husband killed over a company that seems to exist primarily to put its little gold logo on shoes and wallets dull, but Scott’s late career is littered with such workmanlike examples of competent, confident drudgery.