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Reviews
Identikit (1974)
One of Taylor's finest performances to the service of, well, not much.
Director Giuseppe Patroni Griffi clearly saw something Warholian in this psychological drama based on a popular novella at the time. The film focuses on the pointlessness of Taylor's Lise's life. But Lise is not through searching. Ostensibly embarking on an odyssey intended to end her life, Lise explores every happenstance and chance meeting with an intensity that is positively riveting. But Griffi is interested in the pointlessness of it all. Warhol himself even pops up in a brief role. But here is the rub. In a Warhol outing the heroine (usually Edie Sedgewick) is unaware of the pointlessness of her existence and is making every attempt to function within modern life. When the pointlessness becomes clear it is heartbreaking for the audience. Here our heroine, as lovely and fascinating as she may be is well aware of the pointlessness and intends to follow it. The result is, well, pointlessness. It can go nowhere else. And the disinterested observation approach taken by the director doesn't help. Taylor is brilliant in an otherwise (deliberately) empty film.