Why is a film about a social climber interested, from an early age aimed at the leap of class through her attractiveness, determined to climb the heights of worldly success and to accumulate money, until death do you part? It may be of interest if the characters have been known to the worldly news fairly recently and especially if the death that separated the no longer happy couple was inflicted by the woman in question, at the hands of a hired assassin.
In fact, this is the story of Patrizia Reggiani and Maurizio Gucci, young and beautiful in the 70s / 80s, at the center of social life, financial scandals, and then black news. Too bad that the film directed by Ridley Scott, which is based on the book The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamor and Greed written by Sara Gay Forden, immediately declares itself “freely inspired” by the real story and this creates that feeling of embarrassment that one feels when one sees words and actions attributed to characters from recent history, some still living, while an arbitrary version of the facts is given, with even some not just inaccuracies.
Facts that in this story were also interesting, for various reasons, for the fashion environment in the years of the great change, for the glamor of social life and for financial scandals. But evidently it was not a chronicle of the facts, a documentary reading that we expected. But we weren’t even prepared for the planing of an annoying trash that doesn’t even manage to become feuilleton, a fiction of a desperate housewife in the afternoon time slot, plagued by a loaded acting, imposed on the actors perhaps always adapting to the ancient cliché for which we Italians speak always loudly and with excessive mimicry and we move our body too much.
We saw the film, which was obviously shot in English, in the original version and this will perhaps be the only case in which dubbing could save a film. Because the actors are forced into a Broccoli English, interspersed with some expressions in Italian (obviously with an English accent) generating an almost offensive mess. In this abyss of grotesque specks, actors like Jermy Irons and Al Pacino fall. There are also too many 157 minutes of duration, which are divided between: meeting, falling in love and marriage; marriage and access to the family with related disputes; financial scandals and corporate plots (long and boring part); betrayal and abandonment and deadly anger. It ends with the crime.
It is not clear why not to tell in this way, even if we want to accentuate the tones, what has been a well-known legal matter. Given that there are no doubts and justifications regarding the sentence and the sentence served by the protagonist, Patrizia Reggiani, we did not expect a reinterpretation in an absolutive key but not even a similar fury on the Family. The two protagonists were chosen young and beautiful, as they were in reality and indeed, Adam Driver is the one who has the gift of the most soberly described character (a bit of an idiot, anyway). As for Lady Gaga, we do not blame her too much, she too called to give her character an over-the-top tone (beautiful looks, however, very precise as a vintage reconstruction and even make-up and wigs). Jeremy Irons is also suitable for the vain Rodolfo, father of Maurizio, former actor of the cinema of white telephones, unbearable snob.
But it is unjustifiable to make Aldo Gucci a kind of mafioso from Sopranos (an Al Pacino who seems to have come out of a senile Godfather) and Paolo, his son, who is entrusted to Jared Leto, becomes a grotesque speck, as well as a total imbecile, and it is not clear why to choose him and then make him unrecognizable under the padding to make him look fat and lose hours of make-up to make him bald and with sagging cheeks. In general, the Gucci family seems to be made up of ex-rich Tuscan buffoons who pull it off, but completely unable to manage the historic brand in a moment of passing away. Frenchwoman Camille Cottin has the most respectful treatment, playing the woman for whom Maurizio left his wife. Salma Hayek, married to Gucci’s current owner, Fancois-Henry Pinault, is the boorish “sorceress” who fed the psychic drift of the ferocious Patrizia, never underestimating the fury of a betrayed woman (and excluded from the golden circle of the Family). Flashing Tom Ford, who in ’94 will rejuvenate the maison, played by Reeve Carney. The real Tom Ford of the film said that at times he felt like he was seeing a version of Saturday Night Live, a “camp” treatment of a tragic event.
Many hits to mark the passing of the years, inexorable abuse of our lyric, at least in the scene of the murder with more taste the Choir with closed mouth from Madama Butterfly is chosen. In the finale, the beautiful Baby Can I Hold You Tonight by Tracey Chapman, but in the horrible version with Pavarotti, like this, to close in the discomfort. In short, we do not understand the controlled reaction of the family, we would have had to take it more. But perhaps what matters is that the brand continues to run, which would be in line with the mentality of the environment. Talk about it, talk about it badly, but talk about it. In recent days the news has come that the various family members “reserve every initiative to protect the name, image and dignity of them and their loved ones” and here we agree. While it is not true that Reggiani is portrayed as “a victim trying to survive in a male and male chauvinist corporate culture”. Those were the times and she, as well as being Maurizio’s wife, could not have a say in the matter, nor does it appear that she wanted to.
For the record, the real Patrizia is today 73 years old, 18 of which spent in prison out of the 26 imposed (reduced sentence for good behavior). Enchanted bride at 22, she was discharged after 13 years of marriage and two daughters (but it took her own) and a check for 1.5 million dollars a year in alimony was not enough, so it was followed by the revenge, the organization of the killing in ’95 and the arrest. In 2011, after 13 years in prison, she was offered probation in exchange for carrying out a job.
He is said to have replied “I have never worked in my life, I will not start now”. Which sounds like a line from a far better screenplay than Scott’s film, a director who has made all kinds of films in his life, perhaps loving only a few, others only executed as diligent craftsmanship at a high level. Moreover, even his treatment of the noir affair of other rich and famous, the Getty family in the film All the Money in the World, had not convinced. This project had bounced over the years among various directors and was finally taken up by Scott who had already been interested in it in 2006. Final melancholy comment: no member of the family is anymore part of the Gucci group. So much the better, if it really was as depicted in the movie.
Even if you set yourself up for the vision as if you were looking at a super-luxury Dallas / Dynasty, you will be perplexed and then disheartened, then irritated and eventually even bored. The Vanzinas would have done something better with it.
#House #Gucci #Review #distorted #family #saga