Tom Ford's Gives Final Word on 'House of Gucci'

House of Gucci has been talked about so much that many of those who have yet to see it already feel like they know everything about it. The film, directed by Ridley Scott, was certainly the most talked about and somewhat spoiled film of the year, but regardless of the countless memes, previews, and social posts, is it a good movie?

The premise promised an all-star production from a great American director and a stellar cast. It stars Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Salma Hayek, and Jared Leto, and what remains are perhaps the masterful interpretations of the actors, above all Lady Gaga and Driver, respectively in the roles of Patrizia Reggiani and Maurizio Gucci. Given this, everything else turns out to be a grotesque and exaggerated soup, which transforms the saga of the Gucci family into a festival of characters bordering on the comic (or should we say ridiculous?).

It is, therefore, no surprise that the royal Gucci family has already taken some wide distances, this had been anticipated even before the film came out as there were no longer ties between the family and the brand, moving very heavy slings and first steps to advance a legal battle. The reason is clear: the Gucci family come out badly. Portrayed a bit like incompetents, a bit like the perfect embodiment of the stereotypical, vulgar fashion aristocracies of the '80s, and a little ridiculed, perhaps the only one who comes out with dignity is Reggiani.

The film, in its very long 150 minutes, certainly fails to tell the complexity of a family that was the most important Florentine dynasty of Italian fashion and of an entire system, which was the Made in Italy of those years. It's an ambitious project with excellent intentions, but with a result that is not exactly equal to those expectations: the final product is missing and flat and that bitter retro taste that takes you when the credits start, does not leave you for a while. We have witnessed yet another failure in telling a page of Italian fashion history by an American production that inevitably looks with an American lens and perhaps American prejudice. The stereotype reigns so aggressively that the film becomes an endless sideshow, between badly managed accents and excessive gesticulation, where any obvious implication of complexity is lacking. And it's hard not to wonder how it would have gone if an Italian director had been behind it, for once.

Even Tom Ford, obviously piqued, wondered if the film was a farce. The American designer wrote that he "often laughed out loud," but also questions if that was the film's intended reaction in what many are calling a brutal review on Airmail. Though, perhaps, it's more of an acute reflection on the part of those who he really lived those facts.

The young Texan designer took over the creative direction of Gucci in 1990, lifting the fashion house from the financial and anonymity quagmire it had been in, becoming the creative architect of Gucci's glorious '90s era. In the review, Ford declared that he has been deeply disturbed by the exaggeratedly bulky figure of Paolo Gucci and concludes by saying that often "films remain etched in people's minds, justifiably replacing what has been reality." Between caricatures and the incomplete and exaggerated portraits, the film is a big no, and Ford's words may be the definitive review.