Tom Ford “Laughed Out Loud” While Watching “House Of Gucci”
House of Gucci got meh reviews from critics who thought it was too camp to be serious and too serious to be camp. Well, Tom Ford, who breathed new life into Gucci as its head designer in the 90s and is featured as a character in it, has given his thoughts on that method-out extravaganza. Tom says that HoG is equivalent to the “nighttime soap Dynasty for subtlety,” and he couldn’t tell if he was watching a real movie or a “Saturday Night Live version of the tale.” Was Kenan Thompson in it? Because that’s how you can tell.
The Hollywood Reporter says that Tom Ford wrote an essay for Air Mail about his experience watching House of Accents. Starring Gaga and Adam Driver, the film follows Patrizia Reggiani as she planned the murder of her husband, Maurizio Gucci. Tom knew Mauricio and says he was murdered “just steps away from my office in Milan.” While Tom says the movie had “impeccable costumes, stunning sets, and beautiful cinematography” and also thinks that Lady Gaga and Adam Driver were good in it, he just could not tell if he was supposed to be in on some joke–was it a “farce or a gripping tale of greed?” At least Tom seemed to like this movie more than he did Amal Clooney wearing pants to the Met Gala.
“I often laughed out loud, but was I supposed to? …At times when Al Pacino as Aldo Gucci and Jared Leto as his son Paolo Gucci were on screen, I was not completely sure that I wasn’t watching a Saturday Night Live version of the tale,” he wrote.
The filmmaker’s criticisms of the film also touch on roles he says he feels were “expanded to simply attract and then to placate the stars” and scenes that should have ended up on the cutting room floor, but remained “solely for the purpose of allowing the leading actors to “act.”
“Because of the size and star power of the cast, the screenplay is at the mercy of servicing them,” he adds, before noting that a lack of time for character development leaves audiences with “little attachment to–or empathy for–any of them. The result, sadly, is a story in which we identify with no one.”
…Despite his criticisms, Ford does compliment a number of the film’s performances and offers emotional reflections on the film. While “Leto’s brilliance as an actor is literally buried under latex prosthetics,” the filmmaker and fashion designer calls Salma Hayek–who plays Giuseppina “Pina” Auriemma–“great” and dubs Jeremy Irons, who portrays Maurizio’s father Rodolfo Gucci “terrific” thanks to his “far more restrained and layered performance than his on-screen relatives.”
“The casting of Hayek is particularly inspired given that her husband is the current owner of Gucci, a fact which will be lost on the mainstream audience.”
Regardless of quality, ultimately the experience of watching the film, Ford says, was difficult. “I was deeply sad for several days after watching House of Gucci, a reaction that I think only those of us who knew the players and the play will feel,” he concluded in his essay. “It was hard for me to see the humor and camp in something that was so bloody. In real life, none of it was camp. It was at times absurd, but ultimately it was tragic.”
Tom adds that a scene where Maurizio toasts Tom’s designs after a fashion show never happened. Yeah, nobody was going to watch campy-murder movie House of Gucci and then leave thinking: “Wow, remember when Tom Ford got that toast?”
As for how HoG did at the box office this weekend. THR says that it came in third with $21 million. It was behind Disney’s musical Encanto which obviously brought all the families to the yard to sing along to Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s bullshit (he wrote the songs for the movie). And also behind Ghostbusters: Afterlife which was in theatres for its second weekend.
This Thanksgiving weekend also helped Dune finally make over $100 million domestically (it already made over $370 million globally) and Eternals has been one of the weaker-performing Marvel movies but that still meant sis pulled in over $150 million domestically since its release at the beginning of the month and made another $11 million this weekend, still making it into the top 5. Here’s the top 10 of the box office this Thanksgiving weekend, via Deadline:
- Encanto – $40.3M
- Ghostbusters: Afterlife – $35.25M (Total from last weekend: $87.8M)
- House of Gucci – $21.8M
- Eternals – $11.4M/Total (Total from four weeks: $150.6M)
- Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City – $8.8M
- Clifford the Big Red Dog – $6.9M (Total from three weeks: $42.8M)
- King Richard – $4.8M (Total from two weeks: $11.45M)
- Dune – $3M (Total from six weeks: $102.2M)
- No Time To Die – $2.546M (Total from eight weeks: $158.1M)
- Venom: Let There Be Carnage – $2.2M (Total from nine weeks: $209.5M)
Of course, Disney and ghost-fighting topped the Gucci drama. It’s all about family movies on Thanksgiving weekend, and the youth do not care. The TikTok generation doesn’t want to watch House of Gucci–maybe if it was House of D’Amelio it would have caught their attention.
Pic: MEGA/WENN