Final Portrait (15)

Stanley Tucci

THERE'S a whole canon of films about artists, their work and invariably tortured private lives. Whatever the individual quality, they have one thing in common – seriousness. The art may be inspiring, but the biopic can be as much fun as watching paint dry.

How refreshing, then, to watch a film about the artistic temperament and creative process that is playful, funny, and doesn’t get mired in reverence.

That’s not to say that writer/director Stanley Tucci doesn’t admire his subject, the Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti; he clearly does. But it’s worth noting that Tucci’s day job is an actor, of keen intelligence and a wry sense of humour. And these qualities infuse his approach behind the camera.

Giacometti is best known for his signature sculptures of extraordinary, elongated figures. But he was a fine painter also, and the film, adapted from James Lord’s memoir A Giacometti Portrait, concerns that aspect of his work.

It’s set in Paris, in 1964, where Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush) asks Lord (Armie Hammer), an American writer, art lover and friend, if he will sit for a painting. It will take, he says, “two or three hours, an afternoon at the most”. That will prove to be a profound understatement.

Tucci offers some jaunty Parisian scene-setting as the well-dressed American makes his way enthusiastically to his first session. But as soon as he enters the artist’s studio the music stops, as he’s confronted by the untidy, dirty, clay-dusty greyness of Giacometti’s creative world.

“You’re my husband’s next victim,” says Giacometti’s wife Annette (Sylvie Testud) gaily, as she leaves him to his fate. For his part, the chain-smoking artist glumly informs his new model that portraiture is “meaningless and impossible” and can never be finished. Just to make Lord even less sure about what he’s got himself into, he’s told that: “You have the head of a brute.”

Unlike many artists, even great ones, Giacometti is lucky enough to be acclaimed and richly rewarded in his lifetime. But that doesn’t make him happy, or confident about his abilities. As that first session turns to an extra day, then another, and another, he frequently curses in anger and dismay, paints out his efforts and starts all over again. Lord keeps postponing his flights home, each time assured it will be the last, and takes up swimming to relieve the stress of his Sisyphean purgatory.

The reason that their hell is our entertainment is in the writing, which is smart and wry, and the performances. Rush may have the appearance of death warmed up – his parched, deeply creased face topped by a great swirl of grey hair, cigarette constantly hanging from his mouth – but there’s a wonderful dynamism to his perfectionist grouch. Whether chasing his mistress, model and muse Caroline (Clémence Poésy) around the room, or laying into breakfast as if it’s his final meal, or slyly coaxing more time out of Lord, he’s hilarious and completely compelling.

Hammer, Testud and Tony Shalhoub as Giacometti’s brother and right-hand man Diego are all excellent as they collectively offer a straight foil to Rush. Incidentally, Shalhoub starred as an Italian chef in Tucci’s directorial debut, Big Night, with which this could be seen as a companion piece – the first celebrating the minutiae of perfect cooking, this the painfully incremental creation of art.

There’s a lot going on in the background that is merely sketched – about Giacometti, the artistic scene of the time, Lord himself. Yet that’s all irrelevant. Like the “finished” Lord portrait, what the film offers is not a facsimile, but the beautifully captured essence of its subject.