Final Portrait

Stanley Tucci pays loving tribute to the great Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti, but the results are repetitive and anti-climatical

Film Review by Jamie Dunn | 08 Aug 2017
Film title: Final Portrait
Director: Stanley Tucci
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Armie Hammer, Clémence Poésy
Release date: 18 Aug
Certificate: 15

The artistic process is under the spotlight in Stanley Tucci’s Final Portrait. For its subject, Alberto Giacometti, it’s an ordeal, but watching his stalled creativity proves just as torturous. The Swiss artist (played by Rush at his most actorly) was famed for his spindly sculptures; Tucci’s film feels similarly stretched.

We follow prissy American writer James Lord (Hammer) as he vainly agrees to have the great artist paint his portrait, not grasping that Giacometti’s crippling insecurity means that the proposed afternoon’s sitting in 1964 will become an extended stay in Paris as the artist repeatedly reworks the painting, usually with proclamations of “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” at his own mediocrity.

Almost all of Final Portrait takes place in and around Giacometti’s stylishly cluttered atelier, and the roaming camera, expressive set design and likable performances can’t disguise the film’s built-in repetitiveness. Lord’s purgatory ends when he abruptly calls a halt to his ordeal, leaving him with an incomplete painting but pleasure in the knowledge it’s over. By Final Portrait’s anti-climactic finish, the audience has a similar feeling.

Released by Vertigo Releasing