It became quite clear early on thatRidley Scott’sHouse of Gucciwould generate hype and chatter after its much-anticipated premiere on November 25. However, not every voice had praise for the finished product. Widely-renowned fashion designerTom Ford, who also served as creative director for the House and was playedReeve Carneyin the film, was incredibly outspoken in his criticisms of Scott’s motion picture.
Ford is not your everyday critic or any outsider looking in. Not only is he an accomplished filmmaker himself who has directed two Academy Award-nominated films,A Single ManandNocturnal Animals, he also started working at Gucci in 1990 and in 1994 he was already creative director of the fashion company.
Certainly due to his experience and insider knowledge, Ford wrote in his review forAirmail Newsthat he painstakingly “survived” watching the 2-hour-and-37-minute film. According to him, living through the film was like living through a natural disaster: “Directed by master filmmaker Ridley Scott and starring Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Jared Leto, and Salma Hayek, the film is … well, I’m still not quite sure what it is exactly, but somehow I felt as though I had lived through a hurricane when I left the theater."
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His main criticism was that the film lacked a real sense of tragedy and instead it made a sort of comedic sketch of real people and events: “I often laughed out loud, but was I supposed to?”. One word Ford uses emphatically is “over-the-top” and his comparison of the film to a “farce” says a lot about what his experience of the film was like. He especially takes aim at the portrayals of actorsAl PacinoandJared LetoasAldo Gucciand his son Paolo respectively saying that when they were on screen he felt as if he was watching “a Saturday Night Live version of the tale”. He even added a ham analogy to describe their acting:
“Both performers are given license to be absolute hams—and not of the prosciutto variety. They must have had fun. Paolo, whom I met on several occasions, was indeed eccentric and did some wacky things, but his overall demeanor was certainly not like the crazed and seemingly mentally challenged character of Leto’s performance."
But not everything was negative in the American designer’s eyes. For him, the “true star of the film was Gaga” whose performance as Patrizia Gucci he deems as “spot-on”.
However, in the end, Ford writes that he left the movie theatre and the feeling of sadness he got from watching the film lasted “for several days”. Ford believes that this emotional reaction is one that only those who were acquainted with “the players and the play” will share.
