House of Gucci review: Lady Gaga and Adam Driver’s latest is at least three movies in one.

What manner of beast is House of Gucci, an adaptation of the 2000 nonfiction book of the same name by Sara Gay Forden? There could have been whole episodes devoted to the central romance between Gaga’s business-savvy Patrizia and her initially passive husband Maurizio ; to the King Lear-like battles about which members of the next generation should inherit control of the Gucci fashion empire; and to the double father-son reconciliation plotlines, one between Paolo and his expansive father Aldo and one between Maurizio and his far cagier dad, Rodolfo. House of Gucci’s dramatic narrative can have a maddening frictionlessness, as if the movie were rushing past the most interesting parts of the characters’ lives to leap from one meme-able moment to the next. What I’m saying, I suppose, is that House of Gucci never gains control of its tone—a prim observation that fans of this defiantly messy movie may well choose to interpret as a compliment. But if the film’s reception goes that way and House of Gucci, like Scott’s 1982 masterpiece Blade Runner, ascends to the status of universally quoted cult object, I would make no objection.