Factory Girl

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.

It's not a documentary.

Just in case you read some of the rather hysterical comments and garner the impression that it's supposed to be about real people, it's not. Andy Warhol was never a real person, just a performance.

Guy Pearce presents Andy Warhol as the superficial creature he undoubtedly was. The original art-as-business creator, the very God at whose altar such modern day charlatans as Damien Hirst worship. Pearce's performance is riveting, his Andy Warhol is as empty as his crapulous art; just a two-dimensional diagram of someone who leaves no shadow. A cartoon.

Sienna Miller's performance as Edie Sedgewick is the best thing she's ever done. Caught in the strobe lights of Warhol's strangely sterile world of non-sexual sex and sofas still in their plastic wrappers, Edie becomes the focus of his short attention span for a while. She flashes across the screen like a speeded up Holly Golighty, while Warhol's voyeuristic viewfinder traps her in it's leering stare. The camera loves her and so does Warhol. But we know it's going to end in tears.

Nothing in the movie has much depth, none of the characters are developed beyond what we already know about them and the whole sixties New York scene is represented by a series of iconic "things". The Chelsea Hotel, the Velvet Underground, a soundtrack of songs that sound right but which actually don't fit at all. For instance, "Leavin' here" by The Birds, a British group in which Ronnie Wood was the guitarist, was recorded in 1966 but was never released in America. However, there it is on the soundtrack being played in the factory sometime in 1965.

But no matter.

The movie pretty much captures the shallow, transient and utterly facile world of Warhol in the sixties and in another way it sums up the emptiness and tragedy of the Hollywood dream machine too. But it doesn't ask any deep questions nor does it pretend to be something it's not. It's entertaining and worth watching for two very good performances by Guy Pearce and Sienna Miller.

It's not art, it's just a movie, albeit a superficial one.

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.

Alright yea its a mess, but going in KNOWING it is a mess allowed me to view this film with more forgiveness than the average film critic was willing to shell out.

First off there's the acting which is all over the place, some people are doing great while others aren't allowed enough room. Casting Sienna Miller was a good call, its a difficult role to cast but if they felt they had to go with a "name" then Sienna was the right choice. As for Guy Pearce as Andy Warhol, that really worked and its a true shame that the film was such a mess you couldn't realize that Guy Pearce was turning in an excellent performance. Especially if you have seen his work in L.A. Confidential and Memento, I had to remind myself a few times oh yea thats Guy Pearce. Had Factory Girl functioned as a GOOD FILM Guy Pearce would have received much more acclaim.

As for Hayden Christensen, I like him alright as an actor but his role as the Bob Dylan-esquire Musician just wasn't allowed much room. He was crammed into a corner spouting out cliché lines and trying his best to do an impression rather than an interpretation. This film was around 90 minutes long, and it should have been around 2 hours long considering all of the significant characters. You can't just brush by Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan (even though they don't officially call the Bob Dylan character Bob Dylan).

What I did like about this movie was that Warhol was portrayed as a little bit cold and detached, but Sedgwick was portrayed as being equally messed up and responsible for her own downfall. So the blame wasn't placed anywhere. Having actors like Jimmy Fallon and one of the Olsen twins in this movie only made me go "what are they doing here?" Pearce and Miller really did give it there all, and even that wasn't enough to elevate this sometimes incoherent mess. Its a mess, but I was still interested thanks to the two leads. I can't wait until Sienna Miller is given a lead role in a GOOD movie.