Face Addict

Directed by Edo Bertoglio, starring Glenn O'Brien, Deborah Harry, John Lurie, Maripol, James Nares, Wendy Whitelaw

Face Addict is a self-regarding documentary in which its director, Swiss fashion photographer Edo Bertoglio returns to New York after an absence of 15 years to revisit fellow artists from the preening, self-indulgent crowd that surrounded Andy Warhol. Like most of them, he was addicted to drugs in the Seventies and Eighties, and a good many succumbed to heroin and Aids. As composer and jazz musician John Lurie (best known here for his work on movies by Jim Jarmusch) remarks: "We were all egomaniacs and drug addicts."

They are tiresome company and the New York avant-garde scene which they contributed to and adorned is a good deal less significant than they believe it to be.

It's a sad film, made even more so by the lugubrious Bertoglio's pretentious voice-over, but not without its moments of interest. His photographs, especially the informal group portraits taken on the roof of his New York studio, are extremely evocative.