It’s heavy competition, but few people on Earth seem to hate Jared Leto’s face more than Jared Leto. What else can we make of the Suicide Squad star’s ongoing efforts to utterly goof up his features, a pursuit of prosthetic face junk that has now extended to the just-released first-look poster for Ridley Scott’s new film House Of Gucci? Dude looks like he got bit by a radioactive Jeffrey Tambor.
Kudos to the marketing team on Scott’s movie, at least, who understandably decided to stick Leto’s picture right in the middle of the composite shot we’ve seen of all five leads, lest an unbalanced arrangement send the entire photo set sloughing off into the sea. Because while it’s not like Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jeremy Irons, and Al Pacino—as, respectively, Patrizia Reggiani, Maurizio Gucci, Rodolfo Gucci, and Aldo Gucci, respectively—don’t look plenty weird here, it’s just that none of them can match the spectacle of Leto’s Paolo Gucci, who looks like a high school senior who has started to apply old age make-up and somehow forgotten to ever stop. We half-expect him to mumble “I’ve got too much shit on me” and mutter about how he doesn’t want to be around any more.
Scott’s latest tells the story of the murder of Maurizio Gucci, who was killed (spoilers) by his ex-wife Patrizia in 1995. And, credit where it’s due: These posters have gone a long way to selling the lurid, weird tone that Scott is hopefully aiming for in this tale of intra-family fashion warfare. (Given that the director is working from a screenplay adapted from a book whose subtitle is “A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed,” we’re guessing we’re in for neither a stolid nor a sober ride.) House Of Gucci is out on November 24, 2021; meanwhile, its inevitable trailer has just immediately jumped to the top of our “Gotta get a load of this” list whenever it eventually arrives.
Update, 7:54 p.m.: Well, speak of the puffy-faced devil: Said trailer has now arrived, slamming into our senses with a lick of Blondie and a lot of fancy jackets. As one might have predicted, Leto’s face is just as distracting in motion as it is in still images. But Gaga and Driver both look genuinely mesmerizing—and not in a “dear god, why” sort of way—suggesting that Scott’s film might be just flashy enough to make all these big make-up shenanigans work.
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