Tucci paints Giacometti’s world on film
MOVIES
BERLIN — Alberto Giacometti, noted for his elongated sculptural figures and a giant among 20th century artists, made a portrait in 1964 in his Paris studio of his friend, visiting gay American art lover James Lord.
Today that painting, Giacometti’s last, and the unexpectedly tortuous saga of its creation is told with humor and documentary-style fidelity in “Final Portrait.”
“I was desperate to do this movie,” said director Stanley Tucci, 57.
“It took me 13 years from when I got the rights” — to Lord’s book “A Giacometti Portrait,” his memoir of the event — “to having it done.”
Lord (Armie Hammer, “Call Me By Your Name”) plans to return to his Manhattan home but sits for the painting for what Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush) promises will take a day.
That, it turns out, is not true, and days spent sitting in the artist’s junkyard of a studio turn into weeks as Lord fumes.
Along the way he meets the artist’s unhappy wife, her Japanese boyfriend, Giacometti’s prostitute mistress and her physically threatening pimp.
“I love Giacometti — he’s fascinating, his art is beautiful. He was incredibly articulate about the creative process — and so was James Lord, as evidenced in that book he wrote. I carried it around with me for years and years,” Tucci said.
From the meticulously recreated studio and the artist’s hermetically enclosed world, “This is very faithful to Lord’s book,” Tucci said. “There’s some poetic license and obviously a lot of stuff has been cut.”
“Portrait” ultimately profiles two very different men: the younger, impatient Lord and the neurotic, elderly painter who can’t seem to let this portrait ever be finished.
With roles ranging from last year’s “Transformers,” studio boss Jack Warner in the “Feud” miniseries about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and a harpsichord in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” Tucci next co-stars in “Patient Zero” opposite Natalie Dormer.
“It’s a very fickle business and you’re never satisfied,” he decreed. “I always think I’ll never work again.”