Mr. Sleeman Is Coming

     Identikit, a.k.a. The Driver's Seat

     Based on Muriel Spark's novel, The Driver's Seat, Identikit (1974) stars Elizabeth Taylor, dominating a film shot in Munich and Rome, directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi.  Luchino Visconti had wanted to make an adaptation of the novel with Glenda Jackson in the role of Lise, played by Taylor.  That would've been an interesting film experience, because of Visconti's greatness as a director as well as Jackson's tendency towards superb acting.

     Still, Identikit has many compelling scenes, mostly those centering on Elizabeth Taylor's portrayal of an apparently mentally ill woman (at the least, a decidedly odd duck).  

     Lise flies to Rome in search of a specific man, apparently, but as the film unfolds, this sought for man could be any of several men she encounters.  As she puts it vehemently, she's not interested in sex.  She purchases a sharp curved letter opener, an implement coming into serious play in the many interspersed scenes jumbled through the film's non-sequential timeline.

     A police investigation runs on through the film as cops arrest, detain, or simply question people who've had encounters with Lise.  The dangerous atmosphere of 1970s Italy, with a terror bombing of some official in a car, lends the film a suggestion that Lise is somehow involved in violence, that she's a wanted woman with Interpol following in her footsteps.

     Her trail, though, is decidedly apolitical.  She's seeking a man to kill her.  Why this is, I'm not sure.  I haven't read the novel and I've seen the film just once, so maybe her motive is more apparent than I could discern.

     One of the men she goes with is a mechanic who tries to rape her.  She gets away, steals his car.  The title, The Driver's Seat, implies someone in charge of her own life.  

     Another man, Bill (Ian Bannen), she meets on the plane to Rome.  Pushy and proud of his new macrobiotic diet, he tries to get her up to his hotel room by explaining, "As part of my macrobiotic diet I need to have one orgasm per day."

     She declines, she's not interested in sex.  She is, however, restless in that department, as seen in a candid moment of Lise on her hotel room bed, caressing her breasts.  This gives way, though, to a prickly wandering about, as if her nerves are tingling uncomfortably, suggesting the side effect of some psychotropic medication.

     She wears vivid multi-colored clothes, sunglasses with lenses pink above and yellow below.  Her eye makeup accentuates a Medusa-like gaze.  Taylor made herself look utterly fantastic in this film, a kind of human bird of paradise.  Her dark hair is a huge bush springing from her head.  

     She carries with her a paperback murder mystery, never opens it to read it, but often has it out, the cover design featuring a stylized figure holding a knife.  She walks about with this book cover facing out, a want ad for any man able to understand its meaning.

     This magical thinking of hers convinces me more so that she's mentally ill, undergoing some kind of episode wherein the world outside seems to conform, despite its general meaninglessness, to the interior life of the psychotic mind.  As someone with Bipolar Disorder, I know what I'm talking about.

     Identikit, or The Driver's Seat, is worth watching primarily for Elizabeth Taylor's solid and confident performance, portraying an out of whack character convincingly, pushing the film forward through its bizarre structure.

     A character met with twice by Lise is an English lord played by Andy Warhol.  She drops her book in Rome's airport, he returns it to her, giving her the impression he might be the one to fulfill her wish.  When she runs into him again in a hotel lobby, his bafflement suggests he's not her killer.  In any case, soon after, she finds the right man.

                                                                                 Vic Neptune