BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE
OSSIBLY THE BEST MOMENT IN RIDLEY rococo-a-go-go true-crime drama 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 knows just what to put in that space.
