Films exploring the challenges of the creative process of
other artistic mediums can be a challenge in themselves, the challenge being
how to explore that process without having characters just sitting at their
typewriters or canvasses, scowling, swearing, and smoking endless cigarettes.
The Final Portrait fails in this respect, and is not helped
by a showy, distracting turn by Geoffrey Rush as famed artist Alberto
Giacometti, and a bland and forgettable performance by Armie Hammer as real-life
writer and art scholar James Lord.
The story revolves around Giacometti offering to paint a
portrait of Lord, something that should only take an afternoon, but ends up
dragging on for over a fortnight. With each day, Lord gets dragged further into
the artist's world and the people in it, such as his brother Diego Giacometti,
and his long-suffering wife Annette.
Unfortunately, writer/director Stanley Tucci gives us no
insight into why Giacometti is so utterly obsessed with painting Lord and why
Lord puts up with the constant delays, which come at great expense and
inconvenience to himself.
Instead, we get some heavy-handed characterisation showing
Giacometti drinking, cavorting with a prostitute, unsure and uncaring as to
where to hide a huge pile of money, and repeatedly shouting "Ow
Faaaak" at the canvas as his latest attempt to paint Lord runs into
trouble. We get it. He's an artist. He doesn't care about money or other
people's feelings. He can't make his mind up about his art. As to why any of
this is the case, no idea.
Having said that, the film looks great, and while the
characters are not convincing, the boozy, shabby chic world of 1960s Bohemian
Paris that they live in most definitely is.
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