Olivia Rodrigo may think she has the monopoly on knowing all about heartache, but, in truth, her latest hit, “traitor,” could have just has easily been written by Patrizia Reggiani (or, if it’s easier to “swallow,” from her perspective as imagined by a Southern Californian teen girl). Granted, Reggiani would have delivered the lyrics in a far more rage-laden tone. Not that purring, mellifluous voice Rodrigo can’t help but offer up on just about every song from Sour except “brutal” and “good 4 u.”
Being that Reggiani is of the hot-blooded temperament Italians are so often stereotyped for (though not with nearly as much cruelty and offensiveness as their supposed accent is when speaking English), it’s only right that she should be as brooding as Rodrigo on “traitor.”
And who else could be the traitor but the man Reggiani gave her heart and soul (and sometimes body) to? Same as it was for Rodrigo (though to a much lesser extent considering her age and all the time she still has left to be disappointed by so many other blokes). Both of the men that these forlorn women were preoccupied with, Maurizio Gucci and Joshua Bassett, respectively, were predictably lame subjects to waste one’s time on (particularly in Rodrigo’s case). Even so, perhaps as a testament to the scant selection of adequate males in this world, it’s only to be expected that such intense pining should take place. Simultaneously hating the traitor in question, but also wanting him back. Or at least wanting him to want her back so that she can flip the script and reject him. Such is the fraught nature of human psychology (especially as contained within le cerveau d’une femme).
Although House of Gucci gets the timeline hopelessly wrong on just about everything for its Hollywoodized revisionist purposes, including when Maurizio started to date another woman (it did not begin at his “little chalet” in St. Moritz), it does capture how Reggiani would later handle news of Maurizio moving on to a childhood friend from a similar affluent background named Paola Franchi (the Sabrina Carpenter of the love triangle, if you will). Although he had already left Reggiani abruptly (and, to her, without warning) five years prior to beginning a relationship with Franchi in 1990, Reggiani was now no longer as easily self-deluded into believing she and Maurizio might have a chance for a reunion, something she held out hope for as naively as a teen girl like Rodrigo.
With Franchi blocking out any potential whatsoever for Reggiani to “charm” (a.k.a. beg) her way back into Maurizio’s life, it’s not difficult to imagine Patrizia staring into the window of a posh restaurant where the two of them were cozied up while thinking, “You betrayed me/And I know that you’ll never feel sorry/For the way I hurt, yeah.” Or, more accurately, “Mi hai tradito/E so che non non ti sentirai mai dispiaciuto/Per il modo in cui ho ferito, si.” It’s also probably not entirely untrue for Patrizia to accuse, “You talked to her when we were together/Loved you at your worst, but that didn’t matter…/ Guess you didn’t cheat, but you’re still a traitor.” Traditore, as it is said in Italian.
The divorce between Gucci and Reggiani would not be finalized until 1994, finally allowing Maurizio to make new marriage plans with Franchi (after years spent living together in the palatial residence Reggiani would be quick to claim as her own after having her ex assassinated). Or so he would have liked to believe, severely underestimating—like so many men before and after him—the William Congreve-inspired adage, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
In Reggiani’s mind, despite Maurizio making it crystal clear that he was as disinterested in her by the mid-80s as Dan Broderick was in Betty, she still saw herself as “Mrs. Gucci” more than ever. Patrizia simply refused to “receive” information to the contrary, liable to accuse Maurizio of such things as, “Now you bring her around just to shut me down/Show her off like she’s a new trophy/And I know if you were true/There’s no damn way that you/Could fall in love with somebody that quickly.” Ah, but Maurizio did—and it was the business of Gucci itself. All at once, he fell down the rabbit hole of making it entirely his own. Maybe he suddenly felt responsible for carrying on the legacy of the Gucci name to honor his father, Rodolfo, whom he had a frequently strained relationship with in adulthood. Or maybe it was just a garden variety midlife crisis that made him wake up one day and see his wife as a shrew.
Patrizia, too, would be the one to accuse Maurizio of playing “twisted games” despite her own fondness for doing just that. And rather than saying some Lady Gaga mumbo-jumbo à la “I’m not a very ethical person, but I am fair,” she’d be more likely to go right to Maurizio and ruminate (in a less Californian tone), “Ain’t it funny?/All the twisted games/All the questions you used to avoid/Ain’t it funny?/Remember I brought her up/And you told me I was paranoid?” Well, there’s no doubt Patrizia was (and likely still is) paranoid. About being duped, double-crossed and all that jazz. Such is the way when you’ve gone off the deep end regarding what you think you’re entitled to (and in this life, we should all remember that’s: nothing). But, in fact, Maurizio was more than generous with his alimony payments, hoping the money would at least get her to see that was all she ever really loved about him. Alas, it was quite apparent there was far more to her obsession than that. And it wasn’t just a matter of being rejected, no. It was, indeed, because she did love him in that suffocating and stifling way that usually only someone of Rodrigo’s youth is capable of sustaining (but because Reggiani didn’t have a “real” job, it was easier for her to do so in her adult stage as well).
E si, it would be just like Patrizia to blame Maurizio for “making” her fall in love with him (despite House of Gucci’s false portrayal to the contrary) when she played her own part in it too. The same goes for Rodrigo (who also accuses Bassett of being a “sociopath” in “good 4 u”—perhaps solely because he decided to have a change of heart) when she bemoans, “God, I wish that you had thought this through/Before I went and fell in love with you.” Even if the “love” in question was based on a concept that real love can never survive on: possession. Ownership. Jealousy. This latter characteristic being something Patrizia was constantly overtaken with, even after she and Maurizio broke up. Liable to curse Maruizio with the lines, “When she’s sleepin’ in the bed we made/Don’t you dare forget about the way/You betrayed me.”
Well, it’s certainly a lot easier to forget when you’re in the ground, no longer sentient. So that one’s on Patrizia for technically allowing Maurizio to “forget.” As for Rodrigo, she played it the much shrewder way by immortalizing the betrayal in a hit pop song that Bassett will still risk hearing in a grocery store (or whatever is left of the public space in the future) decades from now.
