Factory Girl (2006)

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.

Fmovies: this film makes art out of artists. it is a beautiful, artful depiction of three people: andy warhol, edie, and bob Dylan (billy quinn).

many will say that it is not the accurate, hard fact bio pic that many people rely on such to be; but like the doors, it paints artful depictions of such iconic legends.

all performances are done well. andy warhol is portrayed beautifully and harshly by guy pierce. sienna miller does a wonderful job as a beautiful girl valued only for her beauty and quirks. billy quinn... or bob Dylan... is portrayed just like the arrogant youth he was at times... bob Dylan was never always this sage who had best intentions in mind. he was human. and too many people forget that when hayden christensen plays him, he's portraying the real person.

beautifully crafted.

The film is cliché after cliché, with two-dimensional characters and a flat, uninspired script. To be fair, Sienna Miller does a wonderful job with the material she's been given. Sadly, it's not a lot to work with.

One of the major flaws in Factory Girl is that there is no character that you can like. I wasn't sure who I was supposed to care about, possibly because no character was ever developed enough to get past their surface. It's hard to portray Andy Warhol in film, after all of the versions that have been done, and his own status as more icon than man. This film only proved the point, by playing him in a way that felt more like a parody than a person.

Over and over again, the film takes the easy road, from its After School Special depiction of drug use to the predictable dialogue, walks through Central Park, even the establishing shot of the Eiffel Tower to show "hey, look, they're in Paris!"

New York looks like a studio set, and the filmmakers give the impression that they aren't even familiar with the city. A cab is told to go to "2nd Avenue and Fifth," where somehow a massive concert is taking place - despite the fact that the address is in the East Village, with only mom & pop stores and small bars in the area.

The casting is nothing if not bizarre. Hayden Christensen as Bob Dylan, sorry, "Billy Quinn," comes off as an opinionated (though incredibly fit and Gentile) jerk with a guitar, Guy Pearce is too attractive for Andy, while Sienna Miller doesn't have Edie's soft beauty.

The greatest crime is that this will be many people's first introduction to Edie Sedgwick, and they will go away with an impression of a simple, disposable girl - with none of her glamour, whose problems can be neatly wrapped up in a few lines about her father. Her entry into Andy's world is nothing more than an entrance to a party, and her fall is just a soap opera decline.

If you have any interest in Edie Sedgwick at all, do yourself a favor and watch Ciao Manhattan, but by all means, avoid Factory Girl.

Factory Girl fmovies. 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.

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.

"The Factory" was the entire fifth floor studio of 231 East 47th Street in Midtown Manhattan serving as artistic sanctuary for Andy Warhol and the place for artsy types in the mid to late 60's. It's also where Edie Sedgwick spent most of her time as Warhol turned her into a starlet on his silver screen and as the original Paris Hilton she became famous for being famous, complete with trust fund and a nasty drug habit courtesy of Andy and his "Warhol Superstars".

Andy Warhol dove into most things artistic; shaping Pop Art, producing The Velvet Underground, and making his own films. Factory Girl took great advantage of the justification for using all manner of film-making formats cutting to point-of-view shots through grainy black and white 8 MM film camera viewfinders. Ask your grandparents... or SAIT instructor Philip Letourneau.

The cameras take you through a real life tragedy as Sienna Miller portrays a charming and naive Edie Sedgwick. Conflicted, she's seduced into fame by a chilling Guy Pearce as Warhol while a painfully dull Hayden Christensen as "The Musician" attempts to rescue her. Denying a relationship with Sedgwick, Bob Dylan's lawyers refused his inclusion in the film but he represents the possible redemption for the spiraling "Poor Little Rich Girl".

Overall, Factory Girl has trouble navigating it's plot shifting to and from Edie as the art that Andy creates, her personal journey, and the people around them both, all topped by a future Miss Sedgwick revealing the story to a psychiatrist in rehab.

There's a great movie in here somewhere but Factory Girl is not it.

C Matt Watterworth http://www.theweal.com