There’s a moment in Ridley Scott’s Lady Gaga-starring House of Gucci when you hear an accent that isn’t a riff on Italian for the first time, and it’s like seeing a Maserati screech through the streets in a World War II drama. The accent belongs to the character of Tom Ford: an all American saviour to the ailing business model of Gucci, rescuing its reputation. The film captures those first few collections of Tom’s in an imagined amalgamation runway: the audacious suiting; that iconic Gucci g-string. Tom Ford (the real one, that is) is one of the few people present in the final project (most are either dead or have distanced themselves from it) to come forward and talk about it, in a review he wrote himself, published by Airmail.
“I recently survived a screening of the two-hour-and-37-minute film that is House of Gucci,” his lengthy and revealing take on the film begins, comparing the experience of watching it to a “hurricane”. Of course, Tom has the license to be flagrantly honest about a movie like this, and how it depicts the Gucci family and the circumstances they found themselves in. He was there to witness some of this unfold, and so, he said, “it is hard for me to divorce reality from the glossy, heavily lacquered soap opera.”
His review seems to skew towards the mostly negative, but he seems conflicted, rhetorically asking: “Was it a farce or a gripping tale of greed?” and saying that he “often laughed out loud, but was I supposed to?”. He compliments Adam Driver’s portrayal of Maurizio, calling him “the eye of the storm” that was the Gucci family’s drama between its cousins and brothers — calling it the most nuanced of the lot. Then there was his polite way of describing Jared Leto’s widely criticised and extreme version of Paolo (“very, very large”) and how, whenever he and Al Pacino, who plays his father Aldo, were on screen, it felt like he was watching Saturday Night Live.
But of course, the ones who come away unscathed are the women in the braggadocios, burly movie. Gaga stole the show, he said, adding “her accent migrates occasionally from Milan to Moscow. But who cares? Her performance is spot-on.” Okay, tea!
If you fancy reading Tom Ford’s review in full (we do recommend it), you can do so over on the Airmail site here. Consider it the ultimate opinion on House of Gucci.