Stepping Into the House of Gaga

(Chase Manze)

We've been waiting for this: the Little Monsters, Jared Leto fanatics, Driver-heads, and long-time admirers of silver screen legends. Or maybe just those nostalgic for proper big-studio filmmaking; for punchy dramas loaded with A-listers, all beautiful beyond compare, clad in impossibly elegant clothing and depicted in foreign locales. All of this so far removed from the Atlanta sound stages now sacrosanct and perpetually in use by a deluge of superhero movies and Netflix blockbusters that are simultaneously viewed by 78-million American households and instantly forgotten. Ridley Scott's House of Gucci reeks of (relatively) Old Hollywood - from 1960s sandal-and-sword fare to Paul Verhoeven erotic thrillers to those late-90s, always-nominated melodramas still drenched in the stink of the Weinstein era. A distinct cinematic legacy is inherent in the film's DNA. Kinetic, narratively propulsive and, at times, outright insane, House of Gucci wins by being something so few films are now: fun.

Gucci begins and ends with Gaga. Her Patrizia Reggiani speeds into view in the film's opening frames. Whirling around curbs and across median lines in her hot-red Fiat, Patrizia lands in the dirt parking lot of her father's trucking business. She opens the car door, steps out, and proceeds to walk, though walk is too flaccid a word to truly capture it. Strut's too rigid. Stroll, too lackadaisical. With each pronounced step Patrizia arrives over and over again to the adulation of countless male laborers in the area. It's as though they can't help but applaud and thank her simply for being there. The movie theater audience is no different. She arrests your attention from first blush, and all you can do is smile and sit, almost unblinking, until she is done. 

Gaga's pronounced physicality transcends genre and media. Whether it's slithering along jail cells in Telephone, setting tone and tempo for legions of backup dancers at the Super Bowl halftime show, or luxuriating in human blood courtesy of American Horror Story: Hotel, her movements always possess this deliberate, weighted quality. Each swing, thrust, walk is a forceful assertion that she understands her surroundings, the task at hand, and what is needed of her.

It's that deep-set intelligence and awareness that makes Patrizia's transformation over the course of House of Gucci so captivating. Post-arrival, Patrizia is quickly introduced to Maurizio Gucci (a toned-down Adam Driver) by way of an upper-crust party. She mistakes him for a bartender, asks his name, and, upon hearing the word "Gucci," immediately changes gear. The pivot is instantaneous. Retaining an air of innocence and a bubbly demeanor, Patrizia forces a stolid and uncomfortable Maurizio onto the dance floor, never letting go of his suit jacket. Gaga makes each small touch, each gentle insistence seem dangerous. Everything is calculated, nothing accidental, and her prerogative is always clear to the viewer. 

She arrests your attention from first blush, and all you can do is smile and sit, almost unblinking, until she is done.

The stakes start off low. There are worse things than throwing all your love at someone with a goal in mind. But Patrizia's fatal flaw is her aspirational appetite. Upon becoming a Gucci, she wants to overpower and dismantle the others. Operating in an almost Lady Macbeth-like capacity, Patrizia feeds her husband ideas as to how to gain power and influence. Finally, her skills as a self-identified "people pleaser" have an outlet. Each successful move bolsters her confidence and, in turn, her arrogance. 

It's here, in the latter half of the film, that Gaga does something truly interesting. It would be impossible to strip Patrizia of her intelligence, so instead Gaga strips her of her tact. At first masked by her feminine beauty and calm, her insistence becomes increasingly brutish. Gaga quickens her speech, throwing out long ropes of dialogue in seconds. She no longer holds anything behind the eyes. If impeded in any way, her face contorts immediately into thinly-veiled frustration, bearing the open implication that her scene partner is an idiot. Most notably, though, her physical vocabulary morphs and expands. While she first emerges from that red Fiat as a pronounced personality, her body is always under deliberate control — capable of demure or submissive affectations when necessary. Later, Gaga drops the sense of control and slowly morphs into a whirling dervish: shouting and gesticulating wildly at anyone around.

In practice, Gaga is forced to play three roles over the course of the film: the early-twenties striver who senses a way out of her current circumstances, an empowered businessperson exercising her will upon others, and the monster unmasked as she falls into a state of moral decay. 

There's an (unorthodox) parallel to be drawn between Gaga's work in House of Gucci and her work in A Star is Born (2018). In both films she begins in a lower social strata (as a typist in Gucci and a waitress in Star is Born). In both she's exposed to a man of infinitely greater means and is given the opportunity to enter his world. And in both she undergoes a profound transformation that ultimately reflects her true character. Patrizia and Ally couldn't be further apart in terms of intention and moral character. One (Ally) necessitates a profound level of earnestness and empathy, a delicate (even innocent) touch that reverberates throughout the film and explain's Jackson Maine's passion for her. The other (Patrizia) requires a grotesque transformation into the mind of a delusional and self-involved manipulator. Tender, humanistic movements vs. volatile, abrupt physicality. This discrepancy highlights Gaga's versatility as an actor, made doubly impressive by the fact that she's only acted in these two films.

While it's Gaga that drives the film, her finest moments occur in conversation with the more-than-noteworthy supporting cast. Much has been made of Jared Leto's performance—from the bald cap and fat suit to his very distinct accent. In the context of the film, all of his humungous choices pay off. His character, Paolo Gucci, functions as the Fredo Corleone of this mafia-adjacent narrative. While thoroughly bombastic and over-the-top, Leto achieves some of the truest moments of pathos in the film, none more affecting than his final scenes with his father (played by Al Pacino) as their time in the sun comes to an end. Another such moment comes with Gaga's Patrizia when she visits his home/studio in an attempt to garner his favor. 

Paolo wants just one thing in life: to be a designer and have his designs seen by the world. His great tragedy comes in his lack of ability. According to everyone around him, from his father to his uncle Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons) to Patrizia and Maurizio, he is utterly incompetent and lacking in both intelligence and design acumen. So when Patrizia visits him and gushes over his designs, telling him he has the spirit of an artist and needs to have his own line within the Gucci brand, you can't help but wince. Gaga presents here as a sly seductress. Each question, asked gently, is pointed and all done with the purpose of inflating Paolo's ego and ingratiating herself to him so he may be more easily manipulated. He smiles and bathes in her fawning, a rare (if not unprecedented) occurrence in his life. 

Finally, having reached a kind of agreement, they dance. Him, celebrating a new chapter in his life full of success and family support. Her, celebrating his stupidity and the ease with which her manipulations worked. Gaga's body swings, jerking and shaking with her arms over her head. Just behind her, obscured, Paolo does the same. With each new step, new contortion, new mirror of Paolo's moves, Gaga arrives, arrives, arrives: making her presence known.