Portrait d'une muse

Better than I had expected. Is the story a bit aimless? Yes. Does it randomly introduce/evict characters for the sole reason that they were parts of Edie's life? Yes. Is it just an hour and forty minutes of Edie going to fabulous parties, meeting fabulous people and slowly declining into a complete wreck of drugs and poverty? Very much so. But I felt that the film did an accurate job of depicting Edie's life, since all that happened were parties, socializing and a terrible downfall. I mean her brother and widow have stated that it's an accurate portrayal, so I don't see how one could disagree. That being said, the film is clearly just a device to propel Sienna Miller's extraordinary performance. Her transformation into Edie Sedgwick is the most precise and utterly flawless portrayal of a real life person I've ever seen. It's quite easily the second best performance of last year (the first being Hard Candy's Ellen Page) and one of the top five female performances of all time. Guy Pearce is also quite fantastic, and Hayden Christensen was much better than I expected him to be. Overall, the film is nothing special. It's not necessarily bad, but it surely isn't great. It's all about Sienna.

For the concerted effort Sienna Miller puts into her searing portrayal of Warhol protégé and underground celebrity Edie Sedgwick, it would have been rewarding to experience a film that matches her unbridled dramatic impact. Unfortunately, director George Hickenlooper, primarily a documentary filmmaker, seems more focused on eye-catching cinematic techniques - a deliberately artsy mix of overtly dramatic images, grainy film stock and slow-motion photography - than honest character development in this highly fictionalized 2007 account of her brief life. The result feels energetic but ultimately rather cursory in the way he depicts the Manhattan party scene in the mid-1960's, in particular, the Factory, where Warhol let his coterie of drug-addicted fame-seekers gather to make virtually unwatchable films that reflect their constant state of ennui.

With her big raccoon eyes, pre-punk hairdo and flashing smile, Miller bears such a striking resemblance to the real-life Sedgwick that she carries much of the film by the sheer will of her character's Holly Golightly-like sense of exalted self-worth. But like Holly, Sedgwick lacked talent to sustain a film career, and the script leaves Miller to her own devices in connecting us with her character's tormented psyche amid her escalating drug use. On the upside, Guy Pearce accurately captures the discomfiting public image of Warhol down to the familiar narcissistic indifference and manipulative shyness, but his character gradually recedes into the background. At first, Hayden Christensen comes across as amateurish and unintentionally amusing as a Bob Dylan doppelganger, especially since he makes a feeble attempt at capturing the singer's recognizable speech cadences. Just as he manages to transcend the awkwardness of the character's intrusion into the story, he also disappears making his impact in Sedgwick's life feel rather fleeting.

Even though the cryptic screenplay by Captain Mauzner, Aaron Richard Golub and Simon Monjack conveniently paints Warhol and the faux-Dylan as polarizing figures pulling at Sedgwick's soul, the story really comes down to her own inner demons. The problem is that she remains oddly elliptical throughout, and Hickenlooper seems satisfied with leaving us with an impressionistic view of a person who barely warrants our attention forty years later. Among the supporting players, there are quite a familiar faces - Ileana Douglas as Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, Jimmy Fallon as Sedgwick's confidante Chuck Wein, Tara Summers as fellow Warhol protégé Brigid Berlin, Mena Suvari as Brigid's sister Richie, Edward Herrmann as the family attorney, Mary Kate Olsen as a partygoer. However, none of them are given any opportunity to shine.

Greetings again from the darkness. Andy Warhol and The Factory poses quite the challenge to any filmmaker attempting to capture the look, feel and pain of that world unto itself. Director George Hickenlooper's best work has been "Mayor of Sunset Strip" and "Dogtown", neither of which drew much of an audience. "Factory Girl" probably has little hope of attracting much attention from movie-goers as well.

While we do spend a good portion of the film in The Factory, this is more the tragic story of Edie, rather than an insightful look at Warhol's art. Edie was really the first to make being famous a job ... think Paris Hilton today. No real talent herself, her name, family money and looks got her inside the art world and exceptionally close to Warhol. Of course, those things were not enough to carve out any real territory and the ending, while tragic, is not at all surprising.

The film is overly choppy in attempting to find the right look and feel and yet with Jagger, Velvet Underground and the Dylanesque Hayden Christensen, the importance and power of music for this era is clearly established. Aussie Guy Pearce does a nice impersonation of Warhol and Jimmy Fallon has his first serious role. Other support comes from Mena Suvari as Edie's friend, Beth Grant as Warhol's mom, Don Novello (Father Guido from early SNL), and Illeana Douglas as Diana Vreeland.

By far the best part of this project is the performance of Sienna Miller as Edie Sedgwick. Even her vocal cadence is remarkable. The physical and emotional turmoil seems very real as Edie goes from top of world to desperation for life. Ms. Miller will at some point break out and become the film star she is destined to become. That role has just not quite happened yet. It could be later this year when she re-teams with her "Layer Cake" director. Let's hope so. Her talent is undeniable and although it is a pleasure to see her performance as Edie, she deserves a much wider audience.

The weakness of the film is best shown by the interviews over the closing credits. Attempting to explain what we had just watched is a pure indication that the job had not been done well.

I knew a lot about Edie Sedgwick before seeing the film and was even prepared for inaccuracies but the major problem with this film is that it is inaccurate not for the purpose of making a point but that it is inaccurate for the purpose of making a one-dimensional film.

Did Hickenlooper paint Edie as a perpetual victim (notice how throughout the film she is never injecting herself but is bent over while others inject her?) just so that he could show her as a victim of Andy Warhol and his drug fiend factory friends? Or that she was always a victim of people like her friend Chuck who did a complete turn on her for that villain Andy? Is Hickenlooper trying to say that the biggest mistake of Edie's life was not choosing Dylan over Warhol in that elevator scene where her future self voices over, "that was the biggest mistake of my life"? Edie Sedgwick came to the factory a sick person, she was already headed for a crash even before she set eyes on Andy Warhol. In reality, she was rejected by the factory friends and many others for the drugs she brought with her everywhere, she was not introduced to them at the factory as the movie shows.

Hickenlooper seems to me to be trying to say that Edie Sedgwick, that fresh faced wasp in knee socks and pearls who left Cambridge with sketches tucked under her arms could have potentially had a wonderful and peaceful life, even a stable marriage with Bob Dylan had she only not met Andy Warhol and been subject of those movies.

I have a problem with this film because I am so interested, most people are, in the real Edie Sedgwick and I agree with another poster who suggested you see Ciao!Manhattan to get a better sense of who she was. If you want a tragic love-story about a good girl who chose the wrong guy, watch Factory Girl.

The real Edie Sedgwick was a person whose hystrionics and drugs were symptoms of a soul that was always trying to fly away, for her the world was always too small and her pain was always too big, and she lived her life as though she dreamed of having her wings singed flying too close to the sun.

One senses that Edie Sedgwick deserves better than this. It's not that Sienna Miller doesn't throw herself into the role but the screenplay - a conglomeration of truth, half-truth, and fiction - lacks depth and the direction is just as shallow. Factory Girl hints at a greater tragedy than the one it presents. By adhering to surface details and never letting the audience get to know the title character, the movie comes across as a generic bio-pic about another lost girl of the 1960s whose 15 minutes of fame leads to a downward spiral. However Sienna Miller is good and if there's any reason to see this film its for her performance.