Factory Girl
Sienna Miller in Factory Girl
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Friday, 16, Mar 2007 01:24
Directed by George Hickenlooper, out now in cinemas nationwide, starring Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, Hayden Christensen, running time 90 minutes.
In a nutshell
Colourful, fast-moving, superficial, predictable, safe
What's it all about?
A biopic of the late Edie Sedgwick, one of the iconic 60s artist Andy Warhol's most famous "superstars". Edie's story was not the most interesting of all Warhol's superstars (Valerie Solanas shot him while Nico was a legendary musician in her own right), but is sad nonetheless. The film charts the tragic rise and fall of poor little rich girl Edie (Miller), from blue blood American to Warhol superstar to struggling drug addict.
After a privileged but troubled childhood, Edie goes to art school and later moves to New York in search of excitement. There, she meets pop artist Andy Warhol (Pearce) who asks her to star in his movies. During her time at Warhol's studio, the Factory, she meets some of the most prolific artists of the decade, including one particularly famous un-named folk singer (Christensen) who is "everything Andy isn't."
Who's in it?
Sienna Miller's considerable talent is a refreshingly pleasant surprise. Her Edie is at once charming and needy, vivacious and nervous, with an alluringly husky voice like she's been chewing broken glass, and a character just as fragile.
Guy Pearce is mesmerising as Warhol. The facial twitches are so subtle that you hardly notice them. He masters Warhol's creepily detached, machine-like ennui, yet there are moments when guilty traces of emotion flit across his apparently stone face.
Hayden Christensen as Not Bob Dylan is embarrassingly bad. His behaviour seems more based on Danny Zuko than Dylan. He is a one-dimensional, self-consciously rebellious little boy who says "babe" and "man" all the time, yet we are supposed to take him as Edie's would-be saviour.
As an example
Edie (Miller): "Your movies - you made a fool out of me!"
Andy (Pearce): "Oh no, I made you famous Edie and that's what you wanted."
Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars
Almost certain to be a box office smash, this largely depends on the tabloid appeal of the film's leading lady rather than critical acclaim. In acting terms, Miller's role is not really fleshed out enough to warrant an Oscar, while Guy Pearce's film roles to date seem to be highly regarded amongst critics but too edgy to win Oscars.
What the others say
"A shallow, unrevealing film." - Guardian
"A brave bid to recreate a modern American tragedy, with a revelatory turn by its lead actress." - Empire.
So is it any good?
Factory Girl is a story of tragic and highly accessible elements. It is the obvious potential of this story that makes the end result so utterly disappointing. Warhol notoriously predicted that "in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes". The chronicle of a fame-hungry young beauty willing to do anything to get her '15 minutes' is one that could have been a poignant parable for our times. Yet it never attempts to delve beneath the surface of that hedonistic, aesthetic-driven decade.
The film contains every cliche you'd expect from a dumbed-down account of the Factory; the cloyingly unoriginal collage of New York in the swinging sixties, the ambient, log-fire sex scene between Edie and 'folk singer' which tells you he's so different to everything else in her life - it even has the obligatory moment of self-realization where, at Edie's lowest point of degradation, she is shown a fresh-faced picture of herself from the good old college days. Cue sentimental music, tears and running through the streets in slow motion.
Edie's demise comes about suddenly, and her darkness is hardly touched upon. The film stays within the boundaries of comfort, when it could have been courageous enough to make a powerful and contemporary social statement. It is precisely because the film is as vacuous as Warhol would have wanted it to be that it is so profoundly unsatisfying.
5/10
Natasha Hegde.