'Final Portrait': He’s Known for Skinny Sculptures, and Eager to Talk of Art

From the moment we hear the French cafe-style accordion music, we suspect that “Final Portrait” won’t be painting too far outside the lines. Chronicling roughly two weeks in Paris in 1964 when Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush) asked a friend, American writer James Lord (Armie Hammer), to sit for what would be his last portrait, this flimsy feature from Stanley Tucci is essentially a 90-minute conversation that feels like three hours.

Confined for much of the time to an uncomfortable chair in Giacometti’s dilapidated studio, hair slicked back, attired in an immaculate coat and tie, Lord seems the stoic opposite of his unkempt, mercurial host.

“You have the head of a brute,” Giacometti tells his subject, who has of course nothing of the kind. As the camera peers into Lord’s invisible pores, his friend futzes with art supplies and confesses faintly shocking non sequiturs, like his youthful habit of falling asleep by fantasizing about raping and killing women. (“Oh,” responds Lord, barely changing expression.) Musing on the worthlessness of his gift in an age of photography, Giacometti emerges as a testy celebrity who cares as little for the wads of cash delivered by his unflappable brother, Diego (Tony Shalhoub), as he does for the happiness of his long-suffering wife, Annette (an underemployed Sylvie Testud).

Relegated to the role of doormat and enabler, Annette watches meekly as her husband indulges his yearslong obsession with his pet prostitute and frequent model, Caroline (Clémence Poésy). A flurry of girlish giggles and empty chatter, Caroline demands, and receives, money and a convertible; Annette, stuck in a crumbling room above the studio, can only bemoan her lack of a functioning kitchen.

As shallowly as they’re drawn, though, the women, swishing in and out during the sittings, disrupt the movie’s stuffy atmosphere and enliven production designer James Merifield’s somewhat finicky aesthetic. Carefully replicated and filmed on a stage set in London, the studio that writer Jean Genet reportedly described as “a seething dump” feels airless and artificial. A clutter of emaciated sculptures (created for the movie by hired artists) watch impassively from the sidelines, and plaster dust and cigarette smoke powder every surface. That glaze, in conjunction with Danny Cohen’s velvety cinematography, softens any hard edges or harsh moments.

Now and then, brisk restaurant visits and slow strolls through a cemetery (an unnecessary foreshadowing, given the movie’s title) ventilate the film, but “Final Portrait” (adapted from Lord’s 1965 book, “A Giacometti Portrait”) is pretty thin on drama. Rush’s performance as the selfish, self-doubting genius is never less than diverting, and there’s a smidgen of excitement when Caroline’s pimps wreck the studio (though honestly it’s hard to tell). Otherwise Tucci’s screenplay remains firmly focused on plumbing an artistic process as dependent on destruction as creation.

Neither reaching for nor achieving the level of biopic, “Final Portrait” merely offers a glimpse into a bedeviled life that ended two years after Lord’s sitting. Lord came away with a $20 million artwork; I hope that Annette at least ended up with a decent kitchen.

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PRODUCTION NOTES:

‘Final Portrait’

Written and directed by Stanley Tucci; production designer James Merifield; cinematography by Danny Cohen. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

With: Geoffrey Rush (Alberto Giacometti), Armie Hammer (James Lord), Tony Shalhoub (Diego), Sylvie Testud (Annette), Clémence Poésy (Caroline).

“Final Portrait” is rated R.