Final Portrait

The chamber play-like Final Portrait is the fifth feature film directed by character actor Stanley Tucci, although it’s only his first since 2007. Tucci does not possess an enormous body of work as a director, but it’s big enough to pick out some auteur tendencies: he is obviously interested in the creative process (Big Night) as well as performance and deception (The Imposters and Joe Gould’s Secret), and he favors intimate, actor-friendly stories (Blind Date). All those elements come into play in Final Portrait, an intimate, actor-friendly film focused on the creative process, with a story ultimately resolved by performance and deception. Set in 1964 Paris (cue the jaunty concertina music), Final Portrait stars Geoffrey Rush as Swiss-Italian painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti, with Armie Hammer co-starring as American writer James Lord. Geoffrey Rush is well-cast and well-stocked with an arsenal of affectations, but a wooden Hammer isn’t quite right.