Factory Girl

About twenty years ago I read a fascinating book entitled Edie, by Jean Stein, about the comet-like life of Edie Sedgwick, who blazed across the avant-garde art scene of New York City in the 1960s. As I read I thought it would make a great movie. Factory Girl, which tells the same story, is not that film.

Sedgwick was a trust-fund baby and sometime model who latched onto the coterie of Andy Warhol. She was beautiful and stylish, and Warhol saw her as a muse for his films, which he made in a loft called The Factory. She was a free spirit who got crushed by the drugs and lifestyle, and died of an overdose at the age of 28.

The film, directed by George Hickenlooper, is full of 60s imagery and music, and occasionally does an effective job of suggesting how crazy the time period was. What it does not do is give insights into Sedgwick. We know what afflicts her--sexual abuse by her father, lingering resentment at her father for driving her brother to commit suicide, and quite possibly bipolar depression (the Sedgwicks seem to have this run in the family, judging by a book by a distant relative of hers named John Sedgwick). But as to what really makes her tick, well, this film doesn't offer any of that. We get the surface of her world, but not the inside.

Two characters who loomed large in her life are also larger than life in his film. First is Warhol, who could not possibly have been invented in fiction. He came from a background of coal miners in Pennsylvania, but he might as well have come from Mars. He seems devoid of the usual human emotions, and this is well-played by Guy Pearce. Warhol is the villain in this story, as he exploits Sedgwick for his own gain and then tosses her aside when he is done with her. I have no doubt that this is true, and that he wasn't a saintly figure, but I think the film is too hard on him as an artist. Several characters ridicule his work--his paintings of soup cans and Brillo box sculptures, but there is no defense of it in the film. Warhol was a controversial artist but also an important one, changing the definition of art, and instead he is portrayed in this film as something of a fool.

The other man in Sedgwick's life is not referred to by name in this film for legal reasons, but clearly it is Bob Dylan (Dylan didn't care that he is not referred to by name--he still sued to have the film kept from release). Hayden Christiansen is the unfortunate actor who has to play Bob Dylan without explicitly being Bob Dylan, and he suffers for it. He gives the character a hint of Dylan's nasal whine, but then pulls it back, as if he were toying with it. It's not a good performance, but I don't envy what he had to do.

As Edie, Sienna Miller does all she can to give this film some life. She looks a great deal like her, and has a verve that it is easy to respond to. She reminded me of Marlo Thomas in "That Girl," if Ann Marie had become a drug addict, that is. It's rewarding to see that Miller, who was more famous for being a cuckolded woman than an actress, truly has the chops to take on such a role.

Though Hickenlooper casts Warhol as a villain for his callous treatment of Sedgwick, he sort of does the same thing, distancing the viewer from her, making her life a sideshow. It's a shame that all these years later this is the film about Edie Sedgwick that got made, when it could have been so much more.