Edie Sedgwick was an Andy Warhol "superstar" and Bob Dylan muse who died at age 28 after bouts with mental illness and drug addiction — and has had a long afterlife as a legendary 1960s "it" girl.
She is an inspiration for "Chiwawa," Ken Ninomiya's flashy, hyper, tragic film about a party girl who becomes a murder victim: Sedgwick is the name of the Tokyo bar where the title character and her circle hang out. The film, however, is based on a 1996 manga by Kyoko Okazaki and tells the story of a girl who wants to be popular and loved, but ends as an enigma wrapped in a riddle.
Her contradictions are reflected in the film itself, which jumps back and forth in time in a blur of images: the by-now familiar approach for replicating the delirium and fragmentation of a drug trip. But the narrative follows the more conventional path of centering on an amateur investigator — a circle member played by Mugi Kadowaki — who tries to unravel the truth about Chiwawa.