Warning: Spoilers below!
House of Gucci, the 2021 film by Ridley Scott, is based on a true story. It follows the resurrection of Gucci –largely due to Patrizia Reggiani’s (Lady Gaga) girl bossing– and the murder of Patrizia’s husband, Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), who crossed her. The movie is hilarious, flamboyant, and nominated for a Grammy. Lady Gaga’s portrayal of Patrizia Reggiani plays a huge role in why the movie’s enjoyable.
The best part about the movie is that everybody and nobody are villains. Bi babe Lady Gaga has been clear in interviews that she doesn’t glorify Patrizia, who ordered her ex-husband’s murder. The real Patrizia is pissed about Lady Gaga not meeting her during the research phase. If anything, Lady Gaga perceives Patrizia as the Only Villain in the story. Patrizia is not a cold-blooded born-murderer. She’s a woman who’s had everything she’s worked so hard to build taken away from her.
I don’t particularly “like” Patrizia, in terms of values. I find her pro-capitalist, individualistic, and too focused on material things. In many ways she represents everything that’s wrong with the second-half of the 20th century. In other ways, she breaks the glass ceiling; she’s powerful and unable to be messed with.
She is intriguing. Her personality has substance: she’s fiery, smart, dominating, calculated, driven, ambitious, and confident. She’s all the things women aren’t supposed to be. Lady Gaga’s character portrayal is brilliant in the way it conveys such a complicated person with such natural ease.
So let’s get to the reasons why Patrizia Reggiani is no less “evil” than her husband.
In the beginning, Patrizia is portrayed as a woman using her sexual powers to control an innocent, awkward young man. The Femme Fatal trope is so old and boring– and is the only thing I really hated about the movie –but it’s justifiable because she’s much more than some sexed-up control freak. Maurizio’s not innocent.
Maurizio originally didn’t want to work for Gucci, his family’s fashion business. He was studying law. He didn’t conform to the misogynistic, power-hungry culture evident in his family. When Patrizia and Maurizio first started dating, he lived with her middle-class family rather than his rich one. He was happy working for her father’s truck business. Patrizia, on the other hand, saw more in their future.
Patrizia is a fantastic business woman. She calls up a TV psychic (Salma Hayek) who predicts she’ll manifest a fortune. She confesses she “wants it all.” More than any Gucci-by-blood, Patrizia sees the business as the money-maker it is. She truly believes in it. She uses her seductive charm, which isn’t sexual with anyone besides her husband, to move the right chess pieces. Maurizio and Patrizia end up owning Gucci.
Maurizio falls out of love with Patrizia the more successful Gucci becomes. It makes sense at the time, we’re made to believe he’s a bit more basic and less money-hungry than she is. However, Patrizia is arguably unselfish: while she “wants it all,” and throws other Guccis under the bus, her husband and daughter are included in her vision. She is banished from Maurizio’s vision… which still includes Gucci.
This is why Maurizio is also a villain: he doesn’t sell Gucci when he cheats on Patrizia and moves in with the woman. While he falls out of love with Patrizia for being too brutal in business, he abandons her and their child to profit upon all of Patrizia’s work at Gucci. Patrizia is exiled from the brand she was accused of being too invested in, only for the accuser to reap its rewards.
Patrizia is humiliated. The experience is patriarchal: Maurizio, the “stupid idiot,” as she calls him nearing the end, loses Gucci soon after he divorces Patrizia because he doesn’t know what to do. None of the business decisions were made by him, even if she made him feel like they were while they were married. She is about to lose the Gucci last name, too, after everything she’s done for the family brand. And, on top of that, she’s left raising their daughter solo while he parties it up in the big smoke.
So she decides to have him killed. The TV psychic, who has now become her–borderline sapphic–close friend, and Patrizia order the killing together. I’m not condoning the murder but pretending like she has no motive (despite it not justifying death) really undercuts the misogynistic, humiliating experience she went through.
She is brutal. That’s her personality. She’s not submissively back-stage, dressing actors: she’s the star, baby. She created the entire production. She made the costumes, directed the performance, owns the venue, and takes center stage. Her husband leaves her for another woman because she’s powerful, exiles her from the business that she put on the map, temporarily profits A LOT from it, and then has to sell it all because he lacks her ability. That’s betrayal.
