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TIME OFF OPENER
P
ossibly the best moment in Ridley
Scott’s rococo-a-go-go true-crime drama House
of Gucci is the one in which the brash, ambitious
young typist Patrizia Reggiani, in pursuit of
Maurizio Gucci, the shy and charming heir to the old-
money leather-goods empire, writes her phone number
in bold strokes of lipstick on his motorbike’s windshield.
That’s a pro move by itself, but what comes next is the
killer gesture: she swipes the bullet across her lips and,
without the benefit of a mirror, effects a tidy scarlet
cupid’s bow in two seconds flat. Either gesture by itself
would be memorable. But it’s the seamless linking of
the two, the easy swing from the inventively practical to
the seductively frivolous, that’s the real trapeze act. The
greater part of acting is what happens between the beats.
And Lady Gaga, the actor who plays Patrizia in House of
Gucci, knows just what to put in that space.
No one should be surprised that Gaga is such a captivat-
ing actor, both in House of Gucci and in her breakout film,
the 2018 A Star Is Born. Singers often make terrific actors.
They’re primed for it: All singing is acting, a channeling
of feelings or remembered experiences through the body,
the diaphragm, the mouth. A song is emotion drawn in the
air, summoned by technique. Admittedly, bringing a char-
acter to life on a stage or screen does require a somewhat
different mastery of craft, and not all singers can make the
leap. But the core skills are there. As an actor, Gaga isn’t an
anomaly; she’s just the latest in a long line of singers who
have also given terrific screen performances.
GaGa’s character in House of Gucci is based on the real-
life Patrizia Reggiani, a woman of modest means who fell in
love with the shy, bookish Gucci scion Maurizio (played in
the movie by Adam Driver as a timid charmer with a back-
bone of steel). After marrying into this illustrious family,
Reggiani then drove a wedge through it. When her mar-
riage to Maurizio fell apart, she hired a hit man to kill him.
Her conviction in 1997 resulted in a 29-year prison sen-
tence, although good behavior helped earn Reggiani, now
72, an early release in 2016.
By now, you may have read that in preparation to play
Patrizia—in the movie’s vision, a woman who falls deeply
and truly in love, only to become twisted by ambition,
greed and jealousy—Gaga employed a number of acting
tricks: She spoke with an Italian accent for six months
straight, even when not in character. She embodied a vision
of Patrizia first as a house cat, then as a fox, and ultimately
as a panther, ruthless to the bone. Reading about Gaga’s
dive into her character is great fun, but it’s best to think of
her MO not as solid acting advice but as just another angle
of her performance art—the equivalent to taking the stage
in a spangled unitard and feathered wings wider than she
is tall. Gaga’s approach to acting may be a method, but it
has little to do with the Method, drawn from a set of perfor-
mance precepts first laid down by Konstantin Stanislavski
in czarist Russia and, much later, bowdlerized by actors
who believed the path to great truth meant walking around
in unwashed clothes for three months.
In the end, trust the tale, not the
teller. No matter how she got there,
Gaga’s performance in House of Gucci
is both tremendous fun and ultimately
touching, likely despite any technique
rather than because of it. (As far as ac-
cents go, remember that the movie is
set largely in Milan and its environs,
where in real life most people would
be speaking Italian. In House of Gucci,
everyone speaks in English, often with
a “That’s-a spicy meatball” accent—so
anyone looking for realism is barking
up the wrong Duomo.)
Gaga’s performance is wonder-
ful because she’s alive to every mo-
ment. Patrizia and Maurizio meet at a
fancy disco party. Despite his protes-
tations that he can’t dance—accurate,
as it turns out—she draws him out to
the dance floor, where he stands like
an awkward totem while she kaboo-
dles around him. Gaga’s Patrizia is a
bridge-and-tunnel seductress working
a siren spell that, with the help of a lit-
tle mild stalking, will eventually make
her a Gucci. Yet in her shiny dress,
with her eager smile and cupcake
booty, she’s undeniably adorable. In
these early scenes, Patrizia’s ambition
and her guilelessness are so entwinedAll singing
is acting, a
channeling
of feelings
through
the
body, the
diaphragm,
the mouth△
Two greats together: Sinatra
and Day in Young at Heart
(1955)SINATRA AND DAY: WARNER BROS.; ROSS: PARAMOUNT PICTURES; JAGGER: WARNER BROS.
Time Off is reported by Simmone Shah