Right now, Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci is the movie on everyone’s mind. It’s the ultra-stylish 2021 thriller that launched a high fashion Asda collaboration and reportedly turned Jared Leto’s blood into olive oil — how could it not be? Of course if you happen to be one of the few people (Gucci heirs) upon which the film’s characters are based, the movie may be of particular interest, or indeed controversy.
Variety reported an official statement from the Gucci fam yesterday, which effectively said that the family were not pleased with some of the claims made in the film, and how little input they’d had in it; their resultant portrayal was, for them, as “thugs”. The Gucci clan are consequently “a bit disconcerted”. Though it “claims to want to tell the ‘true story’ of the family”, the film is said to carry “a narrative that is far from accurate.”
Translated from its original Italian, the statement reads: “The production of the film did not bother to consult the heirs before describing Aldo Gucci – president of the company for 30 years – and the members of the Gucci family as thugs, ignorant and insensitive to the world around them, attributing to the protagonists, events, a tone and an attitude that never belonged to them.” Yikes.
“This is extremely painful from a human point of view,” it continued, “and an insult to the legacy on which the brand is built today.” Lady Gaga’s character, Patrizia Reggiani (a “definitively convicted” instigator of murder), seems to be a particular sticking point for the family, who they say is painted as a “victim…trying to survive in a masculine and macho corporate culture.” And not just in the film, but in “the statements made by cast members.”
“Over the course of its 70-year history during which it was a family business, Gucci was an inclusive company,” the statement goes on to say, citing several female department heads they had in the 1980s (also the time period of the film). “Gucci is a family that lives honoring the work of its ancestors, whose memory does not deserve to be disturbed to stage a film that is not true and that does not do justice to its protagonists.”
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