‘Factory Girl’

If there was more to ’60s ‘it’ girl Edie Sedgwick than surface charm and underlying neurosis and self-pity, this film fails to capture it.

By: Elise Nakhnikian
   When Andy Warhol meets Edie Sedgwick in Factory Girl, the fictionalized story of the real-life Warhol muse, the two snap together like LEGOs, her need for adoration clicking into his greed for fresh material. Warhol saw the makings of a star in this pedigreed Paris Hilton, a gorgeous and glamorous girl from a family where people have names like Fuzzy and Minty. She saw an established genius whose life and art she could hitch onto, taking her places that the art school dropout didn’t have the talent or tenacity to get to on her own. All Edie had to do was be herself and Andy would do the rest, putting her into movies, and — more importantly — in front of cameras and microphones all over town.
   The lonely, mottle-skinned coal miner’s kid was genuinely starstruck by the famous people he met, so being able to make a superstar of a WASP heiress probably thrilled Warhol. The movie even shows him getting an autograph from a musician who is clearly meant to be Bob Dylan (though Hayden Christensen tries so hard to get the notes right that he misses the tune, replacing Dylan’s sui generis cool with a mannered hipness). But the man who introduced the notion of 15 minutes of fame was too icily analytical to document youth and beauty without also questioning his own fascination with them. His films of Edie — particularly Poor Little Rich Girl — invite us to bask in her presence but also leave plenty of time to think about why her monologues and daily routines are so charming, or anyway engaging, when someone else’s might just be a yawn.
   Factory Girl starts with this same material — or, rather, a carefully constructed facsimile, something Warhol might have appreciated — yet it ends up a flavorless mush. Rather than ask any interesting questions about who Edie was or why so many artsy New Yorkers were so enamoured of her, for a few charmed years in the ’60s, it just offers a standard- issue dose of vicarious pleasure laced with cautionary messages.
   The pleasure comes mostly from watching Sienna Miller, the gamine and game actress who plays the blue-blooded beauty, and Guy Pearce, who plays Warhol. There’s also a spoonful or so of watered-down voyeuristic interest to be gleaned from the goings-on in the movie’s recreation of Warhol’s cavernous, silver-walled Factory.
   With her cap of short hair, black-rimmed eyes, throaty voice, and almost painfully vulnerable air of perpetual hope and enthusiasm, Miller is captivating as Edie the ’60s superstar, a little bit Holly Golightly and a little bit Liza with a Z. Maybe the actress — who’s best know so far for her looks, her sense of style, and her long-term relationship with actor Jude Law, who famously cheated on her with his nanny — identified with Edie, who presumably had other talents but became famous just for her looks and personal magnetism.
   Pearce’s Warhol is also magnetic, an emotional ice fortress who’s never alone but always lonely, watching closely from behind his impenetrable shades, chatting on the phone at night like a teenager, and dropping little poison sacks of words in his soporific whisper.
   The movie’s cautionary message is harder to read, as if the filmmakers felt they needed to tack one on but didn’t know quite what to say. At first, they seem to blame Warhol for the descent into drug addiction and spending spree that laid Edie low for a while and ultimately killed her. So does the Dylan character, who woos Edie (Dylan is said to have written "Just Like a Woman" and "Like a Rolling Stone" about Edie) before sinking out of her life on the Factory elevator, leaving her with dire warnings about how she’s being preyed on by Warhol. Edie’s tyrannical and apparently incestuous father is also blamed for the "big sadness" she tries to ward off through self-medication.
   But then rehab Edie admits that she made her own choices and nobody else is to blame for how her life turned out, after which a set of non-actors who knew the real Edie share their memories of her over the closing credits. They leave a strong impression of a shooting star programmed for an unstoppable downward trajectory, with the charisma, love of instant gratification, and allergy to responsibility that are common to addicts, plus a tendency to trust everyone that did her no good in the cutthroat world of the Factory. "Everyone I knew that really knew her wanted to save her," says George Plimpton, to which another friend adds: "And believe me, that was some job!"
   So what’s the point of watching a re-enactment of this ultimately sad, even sordid story — especially when Edie herself is still there for the gawping for anyone who wants to rent Ciao! Manhattan? Beats me.
   If there was more to Edie than surface charm and underlying neurosis and self-pity, Factory Girl fails to capture it, so in the end you really don’t care what happens to her. Besides, as nobody knew better than Warhol, there’s nothing more boring than a slavish imitation that sheds no new light on the original.
Rated R for pervasive drug use, strong sexual content, nudity and language.