In her prime, Elizabeth Taylor had more influence than almost any other actress in Hollywood. I greatly admire her for some of the bizarre roles she chose at that time, including such curiosities as Reflections in a Golden Eye or Boom!, two movies I first learned about from the book The Worst Movies of All Time. I found merit in both those films, though I will concede neither makes it easy for the audience to appreciate them.
1974’s Identikit (a.k.a. The Driver’s Seat) is another such movie, yet another daring choice that would have dimmed the star of a lesser performer. This deeply odd film has her playing a disturbed, volatile character who suddenly goes to southern Italy. Her reasons for going there are far from immediately obvious.
Her behavior is unusual from the first moment we see her, where she is in a dress shop. Admittedly, it is a strange dress shop, with seemingly no clothes except for the garish outfit she tries on. The rest of the space seems to be occupied by bare mannequins with silver foil wrapped around their heads. Maybe this store just sells one outfit, but one that is really expensive.
The dress is unique, I can say that for certain. It is so gaudy that is kind of stunning in its own way. It would definitely take a confident person to wear it. As her landlady asks her when she’s wearing it later: “Where are you going dressed like that? To join the circus?” Taylor almost didn’t buy the dress after discovering it is stain-resistant. Seems like an odd thing to go into such a tirade over, yet this will factor into the plot eventually. Also, the pattern and color combination on it is crazy enough that it would take some significant contamination for anything to show up.
Everything about Taylor’s journey will be odd. At the airport, an elderly woman asks her for advice on which of two books to buy: “Which do you think will be exciting–more sadomasochistic?” When she boards the plane, it is in a group of people that, if they had been walking in a straight line, would have necessitated walking through a wall to get there.
Things get even stranger on the flight. The guy seated to her right (Maxence Mailfort) suddenly gets up and changes seats as the plane is taking off. On the other side of her is Ian Bannen, played an obnoxious lech who is very insistent he is her type. He also talks at length about being on a macrobiotic diet. He claims the rules of that diet require him to have an orgasm once a day. I have my doubts about that.
From here the film will repeatedly flash forward to the police interrogating different characters Taylor had encountered at one point. Mailfort will be shown the most, largely getting grilled about why he changed seats so abruptly. There are other characters, such as a woman who had seen Taylor at the post office, saying, “It’s like something came out of her. A latent force that all women have.”
And yet we still don’t know at this point why the police are interested in her. Maybe she’s a suspect in some of the terrorism that seems to be a constant concern. Especially memorable is a long row of soldiers armed with rifles at the airport—an image which immediate brought to my mind Children of Men. I guess you need that kind of security when you have incidents like the man who runs through the airport past Taylor with the police in hot pursuit. He snags a child as a hostage before being shot to death by the cops.
Taylor seems to be a magnet for weirdness in this picture. Perhaps the biggest surprise is Andy Warhol in an extended cameo. It is interesting to see him playing somebody other than himself, though the role isn’t much of a stretch, admittedly. There’s an old woman (Mona Washbourne) Taylor goes shopping with who first appears to have died while in the bathroom, when she really just fell asleep on the can. I wish I could relax like that.
Taylor’s performance is mercurial, vague and fascinating. The script gives her many great lines full of melancholy, such as, “I’m feeling homesick for my loneliness. I want to go home so I can feel my loneliness.” There’s also this: “There’s so much confusion. I left part of myself at home. The rest of myself will be arriving shortly.”
It is especially curious how she keeps parting with things, such as her passport, which Washbourne watches her shove between the seat cushions of their taxi. At one point, she carelessly tosses her house keys into shrubbery without breaking stride.
If my description of Identikit may seem frustratingly vague, then I have accurately conveyed some of the experience of watching this. And yet, the film will conclude with an ending that makes sense given what we have seen. In retrospect, it is inevitable it would arrive at this conclusion. But more than plot, this is a film more concerned with sustaining a certain mood.
Dir: Giuseppe Patroni Griffi
Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Ian Bannen
Watched as part of Severin’s blu-ray box set House of Psychotic Women