Directed by Stanley Tucci
Country: UK
“Final Portrait”, the first film of Stanley Tucci in 10 years, not only brings about a few interesting aspects about the personality of the Swiss multidisciplinary artist Alberto Giacometti, but also stages his relationship with James Lord, the film narrator and art critic who exhaustively posed for him in an impeccable suit, delaying consecutively his trip back to New York.
British cinematographer Danny Cohen did an excellent job, giving the picture the monochromatic tones that had marked the artist’s painting style while capturing Giacometti's decrepit, and often messy, studio and the 1964 Parisian atmosphere.
Geoffrey Rush ("Shine", "Quills", "The King's Speech") and Armie Hammer ("Call Me By Your Name"), embodying Giacometti and Lord, respectively, become the true artisans of a passable biopic whose mood kept oscillating between the diverting and the unaspiring. There were brief moments where I could engage with the characters, while on others, I expected much more as I started to react with indifference to the repetitive swearing proper of a perpetually unsatisfied genius.
“I will never be able to paint you as I see you. It’s impossible.” Says the artist to his model. A bit neurotic and sometimes radical in his attitudes, the temperamental Giacometti keeps his large income at home, confesses he thinks about suicide on a daily basis, only cares about his miserable wife (Sylvie Testud) when he’s sick, and burns all his money with a young hectic prostitute named Caroline (Clémence Poésy), his primary model, inspiration, and obsession. Sometimes, dominated by frustration and impelled by furious attacks, he throws his valuable art in the garbage.
Tucci’s ideas, together with Rush’s acting abilities, were enough to minimally shape the artist, but this biographical drama has no place among the best I’ve seen lately.
