✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Cinema

Final Portrait ★★★★★

18 Aug 17 – 18 Oct 17, Times vary

Final Portrait, about the experience of sitting for a Giacometti painting, is a good likeness artfully composed

By CW Contributor on 14/8/2017

1 CW reader is interested
Final Portrait film review
Final Portrait film review
Final Portrait 4 Final Portrait Matthew Robinson
Geoffrey Rush is the best swearer in the game. In The King’s Speech, his speech therapist encouraged Colin Firth’s stammering George VI to cuss fluidly; in Final Portrait, his Alberto Giacometti takes effing and blinding to the next level. ‘Fuh-AAARRRGHHHHH-kugh’ he growls at the canvas when things aren’t going well. ‘Poo-TAIN! MeeeerDUH!’


Things are often not going well when Giacometti sits at the easel; perversely, this means they’re going very well. As Giacometti’s brother Diego (Tony Shalhoub) explains to writer James Lord (Armie Hammer), Alberto thrives off discomfort – the intention is not to be completely unhappy but perfectly unhappy. Lord nods but doesn’t sympathise. By this point, he’s been sitting for Giacometti’s titular portrait for much longer than expected, and his bum is getting sore. He’d settle for comfort.



TRY CULTURE WHISPER
Receive free tickets & insider tips to unlock the best of London — direct to your inbox
It’s 1964 in Paris, and Lord – a friend of Giacometti’s – has agreed to spend an afternoon being the subject of a painting. Suave but brisk in his mid-century American confidence, Lord believes he can play muse for a couple of hours before heading back to New York. Considerably less business-like, Giacometti persuades him that another afternoon’s work is necessary; the following day he begs for one more session. And then another.


When he gets Lord to postpone his flight for the second time, it’s clear that precise time-keeping means even less to the Swiss artist than banks do: ‘I’m Swiss-Italian,’ he protests when Lord argues that it’s a betrayal of his nationality to keep money stashed around his studio in grubby paper bags. He’s even less bourgeois in his romantic life. Forced to stick around for weeks waiting for the ordeal to be over, Lord witnesses Giacometti’s tempestuous and tender relationship to wife Annette (Sylvie Testud) and his romance with prostitute Caroline (Clémence Poésy).




The film itself is comparatively mild, although it never has the stale, stiffish air of over-reverent biopics. It could be said that Stanley Tucci’s film is more interested in eccentricity than genius, but the conversations between Giacometti and Lord are intriguing, and they’re believably acted by Rush and Hammer.


Hammer again pulls off his affable trick of making a handsome, tall, baritone-voiced alpha-intellectual seem like a bit of an underdog. Rush certainly sounds the part, as mentioned, and he looks it too: when he stands face-to-face with a plaster Giacometti sculpture, Tucci’s camera lingers long enough to allow us to notice how the crags and creases are mirrored.


His actual performance is inextricably tied up with the script’s depiction of Giacometti’s self-presentation. At one point Lord calls the painter ‘a ham’, and Rush’s performance of Giacometti as a lugubrious and ribald genius – perennially smoking, whoring, and complaining – is also a performance of Giacometti’s OTT performance of same. Rush navigates the difference with ease: whenever you’re aware that you’re watching a sly old ham, that ham is Giacometti rather than Rush. Tucci’s light-hearted and amiable movie succeeds as a result.


What Final Portrait
Where Various Locations | MAP
Nearest tube Leicester Square (underground)
When 18 Aug 17 – 18 Oct 17, Times vary
Price £determined by cinema
Website



Most popular

Best London Exhibition to see now
Top exhibitions on now in London
Things to do in London this weekend: 9–11 June
Things to do in London this weekend: 9–11 June
Irene Maiorino and Alba Rohrwacher in My Brilliant Friend season 4, HBO/Sky Atlantic (Photo: HBO)
My Brilliant Friend, season 4, Sky Atlantic: first-look photo, release date, plot, cast

Editor's Picks

What's on TV: autumn 2017
What's on TV: autumn 2017
Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron and the spy-thriller journey to Atomic Blonde
Saoirse Ronan - The Host (2013)
The best and worst supernatural love stories
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
1

Cinema

Drama

Comedy

You might like

  • gods own country film

    God's Own Country film review ★★★★★

  • A Ghost Story film review

    A Ghost Story film review ★★★★★

  • Land of Mine film

    Land of Mine ★★★★★

  • Detroit film review

    Detroit film review ★★★★★

  • Dunkirk film review

    Dunkirk film review ★★★★★

  • It Comes at Night – Joel Edgerton

    It Comes at Night film review ★★★★★



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×