Quite mesmerizing film of a Muriel Spark novel, a grippingly nightmarish journey of a deranged woman travelling to Rome in search of her own death. The film has a fairly unique and dreamlike atmosphere all it's own, with every event heightened and irrational, filtered through the fevered consciousness of a frizzy-haired and panda-eyed Elizabeth Taylor. You can't, at any time, ever be sure what is supposed to be real and what isn't: every person she encounters is presented how *she* sees or imagines them, rather than how they objectively *are*, and as a result the film is so strange that even a couple of appearances by a white-suited Andy Warhol, as an English lord(!) seem perfectly reasonable and unsurprising.
Taylor is splendid in this highly unexpected and out-of-character arthouse role - her last great one: a madwoman striding around a world of her own making in a truly awful dress. It must have taken some courage for such a glamorous Hollywood icon to present herself in this unflattering a light, for she was still at the time a strikingly attractive woman, just slightly over the hill and going to seed, which she plays up and accentuates throughout.
Those looking for a simple and easily-digestible narrative may find it all very pretentious and frustrating, but I found I was thoroughly absorbed by every scene up until the very end, which looked good but I didn't feel resolved the story in a satisfactory-enough way.
It's definitely not for most, but if you're a fan of other classics in the 'Crumbling Female Psyche' genre, such as Mulholland Drive, Persona or Repulsion, there's a lot here to like.
7½/10.
Taylor is splendid in this highly unexpected and out-of-character arthouse role - her last great one: a madwoman striding around a world of her own making in a truly awful dress. It must have taken some courage for such a glamorous Hollywood icon to present herself in this unflattering a light, for she was still at the time a strikingly attractive woman, just slightly over the hill and going to seed, which she plays up and accentuates throughout.
Those looking for a simple and easily-digestible narrative may find it all very pretentious and frustrating, but I found I was thoroughly absorbed by every scene up until the very end, which looked good but I didn't feel resolved the story in a satisfactory-enough way.
It's definitely not for most, but if you're a fan of other classics in the 'Crumbling Female Psyche' genre, such as Mulholland Drive, Persona or Repulsion, there's a lot here to like.
7½/10.