The Versace family was not pleased, to put it mildly, with “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” and has, in advance of the air date, issued a statement describing the FX series as a fiction, and inaccurate, which it may well be here and there and perhaps everywhere. Another kind of fiction suggests itself early in the series when it becomes evident—despite the title, and the extravagant publicity displays of Versace images—just how little, comparatively speaking, this tale has to do with the 1997 murder of the designer (portrayed by Edgar Ramirez), or with the Versace family, represented by Gianni’s sister Donatella (a lethally hysterical Penelope Cruz).
Based on Maureen Orth’s “Vulgar Favors,” the central drama here—notwithstanding deadly intermittent efforts to drag things back to the Versaces—concerns serial killer Andrew Cunanan ( Darren Criss ), who murdered five men in a three-month period, four of them gay, and two of them wealthy and accomplished men of advanced age. Versace was the fifth and last victim, shot in front of his Miami residence. The narrative focus on Cunanan—he’s the story—is what holds this 10-part saga together, and it does so compellingly throughout.
It does so despite the periodic returns to the Versaces—scenes that look back on the young Gianni’s dreams of a career in designing, or on Gianni and Donatella arguing about whether publicity was more valuable to a designer than the artistic merit of his clothes. Gianni holds out staunchly for the superior value of art, it will come as no surprise. In another exchange Gianni and Donatella share their views on the meaning of creativity. There’s good reason, in short, for the sense of relief that comes flooding in each time we depart the precincts of art and culture represented by the Versace household of this film to return to the world of a serial killer.
That world is evoked in elaborate detail, telling in its observation, unsparing in its brutality. Mr. Criss is never less than persuasive as the well-educated, well-read and attractive charmer who murdered two of his former lovers when—according to the film’s version of his life—they rejected his lies about his fabulous background and achievements. In doing so, they had rejected him.
Both the slaying of the two men, David Madson (Cody Fern) and Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock)—each a vivid character—and the slow, chilling journey from loving friendship to murder are haunting in ways the rest of the film’s violent episodes are not. Which isn’t to say that the killer’s obvious designs on his next victims aren’t powerfully rendered. But what they’ve become, as his spree progresses—and Cunanan has been added to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List—is familiar, impersonal, and ever more incomprehensible.
All the more reason to appreciate the expanded role given the family of Chicago architect Lee Miglin (an impressive performance by Mike Farrell), one of Cunanan’s rich elderly victims and a closeted gay man. His devoted wife, Marilyn (Judith Light), who has a highly visible career of her own, is determined to thwart any report on her husband’s brutal murder that suggests it had anything to do with his hidden sexual life. A life of which she’s clearly aware, as her knowing look and tense, forbidding silences show—exactly the kind of presence Ms. Light knows how to project, and she does it here with consummate skill. You don’t want to tangle with Marilyn—we feel it, and more to the point the police feel it.
All of which is meant to express one of the film’s many social messages about gay life, in this case that shame over a loved one’s gay identity could be so great that the bereaved wife in question is willing to subvert the police hunt for the real killer, by insisting publicly—she does it on television—on passing the murder off as a random act by a burglar.
The show’s most coherent and eloquent chapter doesn’t come till the story is nearing its end: the penultimate episode in which Cunanan’s childhood, and his family background, stand revealed. Here’s his powerful con man of a father, Modesto—a role Jon Jon Briones carries off superbly—a tyrant filled with delusions of omnipotence and faith in his capacity to outsmart most of the world. All were qualities his youngest son, Andrew, appears to have absorbed. He was his father’s favorite, the son he nurtured as special and showered with gifts and privileges given to no other child as he tutored his boy in the way to get on in the world. What his four-square heterosexual parent never counted on was a son who would put those skills to work making his way through life attracting well-heeled gay men.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Review: A Focus on the Manhunt
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