‘Final Portrait’ Trailer: Geoffrey Rush Paints Armie Hammer and Tests His Patience in Stanley Tucci’s Return to Directing — Watch
Armie Hammer‘s “Call Me by Your Name” follow-up is another Sony Pictures Classics period piece that casts him as an American on a European excursion.
In Paris-set “Final Portrait” — Stanley Tucci’s first film as a writer/director since 2007 (“Blind Date”) — Hammer plays James Lord, a writer who agrees to sit for a 1964 session with Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush). But hasty, distracted Giacometti demands weeks of Lord’s life, and 18 sessions altogether.
More than two decades later, Lord published a nearly 600-page biography of his late friend and patience-tester. Giacometti died in 1966 at age 64, shortly after traveling to New York for an exhibition of his sculptures, lithographs, and paintings at the Museum of Modern Art.
“Final Portrait” premiered at the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival, where it earned a B+ from IndieWire. Co-starring three-time Emmy winner Tony Shalhoub, Clémence Poésy (the “Harry Potter” films), and Sylvie Testud (“La Vie en Rose”), the film was released across the pond in August.
Its American premiere will take place on March 9 at SXSW. Hammer is expected to attend, as he’ll be honored one night earlier alongside P.T. Anderson at the Texas Film Awards, presented by the Austin Film Society.
The same cannot be said for Rush: in December, he resigned as president of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts, following a report that he engaged in “inappropriate behavior” while performing as King Lear in a Sydney Theatre Company production that ran from November 2015 to January 2016. Later that month, Rush filed a defamation lawsuit against the news organization that published the allegations — which he denies — Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.
“Final Portrait” will be released on March 23. Watch the trailer below.
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