Film Review: Final Portrait

Actor Stanley Tucci makes an assured directorial debut with Final Portrait, a Beckettian exploration of art, genius and indulgence. Set in Paris in 1964, the film recounts the real encounter between world-renowned artist Alberto Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush) and American art-lover James Lord (Armie Hammer). Lord is due to leave Paris when Giacometti asks him to sit for a portrait. Flattered and intrigued, Lord agrees – only to discover that the path to creative genius rarely runs smooth or on schedule.

Rush’s Giacometti is a delight, all wild grey hair and sceptical stares over wire-rimmed glasses. Plagued by self-doubt and a sense of futility, he can barely bring his brush to canvas before swearing and storming away, bemoaning the uselessness of life and art and insisting Picasso was a hack.

As Lord returns to Giacometti’s studio day after day, racking up a financially ruinous amount of flight cancellations, he isn’t comforted by the artist’s insistence that no portrait is ever truly finished. “That’s the terrible thing,” the artist muses. “The more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.”

The seemingly infinite, repetitive nature of their interactions become surreal, hilarious and exasperating, though Tucci imbues them with a genuine affection for the artistic process.

Tucci’s own visuals are suitably curated with the upmost care. Using a palette of greys, browns and blues, every surface Tucci’s camera touches has a textured quality, as if painted or sculpted by Giacometti himself. Paint peels from the walls like papier mache, and window panes differ in tint so that the lightbeams streaming into the studio are an ever-changing Rothko. Impressive stuff.