Lady Gaga is a great actress but this truly was an ensemble piece, as far as I was concerned.
She shines as Patrizia Reggiani who meets Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) by chance at a party and they soon fall very much in love though their second meet-cute is orchestrated by her. However, while Maurizio's father, Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons) believes that she's a gold digger. While that may be true, she does convince him to let his Uncle Aldo (Al Pacino) and his cousin, Paolo (an unrecognizable Jared Leto) back into his life and back into the family business and while Patrizia thinks she may be calling the shots (and probably is in the beginning), it is ultimately Maurizio who takes over, eventually cutting Patrizia out entirely so she arranges to have him murdered. She refuses to let him divorce her. There is a bit more to it than that, including undermining his uncle and getting him arrested for tax evasion and some bizarre business decisions on Maurizio's part, plus his affair with an old friend, Paula (Camille Cotton).
While the true story certainly had plenty of fodder for several movies, I found everything jumbled and shiny, behind the perfect, glamourous costumes, pop soundtrack and heavy make-up, some things were just weird, like Patrizia befriending a TV physic, Pina (Salma Hayek), and I feel that the plot moved too swiftly, never understanding why the characters were making the decisions they did. It's such a shame that so much talent was largely wasted. Grade: B
Side Notes:
-The real victim in all of this is Patrizia and Maurizio's daughter, Alessandra, one parent died, the other jailed for murder for hire.
-I'm not a violent person (in fact, I'm basically a pacifist) but you can't just murder a person in board daylight, without gloves or a mask on. I mean, seriously.
-I can't believe that Patrizia really was that much of a gold digger, after all, her father owned a trucking company, so she wasn't exactly a peasant.
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