With the release of Stanley Tucci's directorial debut feature film, Final Portrait, (last month) this seemed a perfect time to share my thoughts on the last film I saw at Edinburgh Film Festival back in June.
The setting for the screening was the perfect send off for me, sitting in the grand looking Festival Theatre audortorium on a very uncomfortable chair, eating a theatre ice cream and wondering where to put my coffee. A film about an artist's final portrait seemed fitting somehow.
Tucci himself introduced the film with affection and gusto to an audience who sounded as if they had just come from his masterclass special, cheering and clapping for a good 2 minutes. I wasn't sure what to expect, apart seeing Armie Hammer on screen again. Free Fire felt like a lifetime ago.
The art critic James Lord was Paris and had met the artist, Alberto Giacometti, and had been asked to be the subject of his next portrait. Lord had to repeatedly cancel and push back his return flight to US, while putting up with Giacometti's behaviour and his intrusive relationship with a prostitute, while he waited for the artist to finish his work. The film ends rather abruptly, with the portrait completed (although looked unfinished to me), Lord returning to the US and Giacometti dies not long after the completion.
The story was a simple one, about a painting, that should have taken an afternoon but in fact took weeks to complete. It's an interesting look into how an artist works and how these two men's relationship functioned. Alberto it seems would always want to meet up with Lord, for drinks, or dinner or a drive, he seemed like he wanted a friend to distract him. Alberto, like any artist, had an incredible studio, full of sculptures, finished, unfinished, with only a few bits and pieces of evidance that he was painting. As well as fascinating, it was also frustrating to watch a montage of the artist constantly repainting over the nose and face. The frustration from Lord leaks out of the screen. But the desire to see other parts of the artist's life is teased and the audience is given more of an insight into Lord'd daily routine in Paris.
An interesting story of the art world and an artist in the 60s, maybe not something for the big screen but a story to seen in a smaller, personal space.
The art critic James Lord was Paris and had met the artist, Alberto Giacometti, and had been asked to be the subject of his next portrait. Lord had to repeatedly cancel and push back his return flight to US, while putting up with Giacometti's behaviour and his intrusive relationship with a prostitute, while he waited for the artist to finish his work. The film ends rather abruptly, with the portrait completed (although looked unfinished to me), Lord returning to the US and Giacometti dies not long after the completion.
The story was a simple one, about a painting, that should have taken an afternoon but in fact took weeks to complete. It's an interesting look into how an artist works and how these two men's relationship functioned. Alberto it seems would always want to meet up with Lord, for drinks, or dinner or a drive, he seemed like he wanted a friend to distract him. Alberto, like any artist, had an incredible studio, full of sculptures, finished, unfinished, with only a few bits and pieces of evidance that he was painting. As well as fascinating, it was also frustrating to watch a montage of the artist constantly repainting over the nose and face. The frustration from Lord leaks out of the screen. But the desire to see other parts of the artist's life is teased and the audience is given more of an insight into Lord'd daily routine in Paris.
An interesting story of the art world and an artist in the 60s, maybe not something for the big screen but a story to seen in a smaller, personal space.