Starring: Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, Hayden Christensen,
Jimmy Fallon, Shawn Hatosy, Mena Suvari, Tara Summers. Rated R.
There
is a certain sameness to all tales of youth
squandered by addiction, a point at which drugs cease to provide a rush
and serve only to stave off the agony of withdrawal. The story of Edie
Sedgwick, the ’60s starlet created by Andy Warhol and his ever-attentive
camera, is no different, save for her brief flirtation with fame. After
dropping out of Radcliffe to pursue her dream of being an artist in New York, she
quickly settles into a self-destructive groove, surrounded by friends who take
advantage of her family’s wealth while encouraging her worst habits.
Among those, Sedgwick is addicted to speed, martinis and
Warhol. Factory Girl recounts Sedgwick’s involvement with the high priest of
pop art, from its heady beginnings to its bitter conclusion. At first, Warhol
(Guy Pearce) is taken with Sedgwick, a vivacious beauty who appeals to his
passion for the superficial. He casts her in his movies – particularly bad
movies, it would appear – when the two of them aren’t lounging in his famed
Silver Factory, exchanging appalling banalities that, in Warhol’s obsessively
narcissistic circle, pass for meaningful truths.
Problems arise when Sedgwick falls for a very different
’60s icon, Bob Dylan. (Dylan threatened to sue rather than allow his name to be
used; here, he is referred to, somewhat preposterously, as “The Musician.”) The
legendary songwriter stands in marked contrast to Warhol, if only because he
seems to believe in, well, something. As the hipper-than-thou embodiment of
trendy generational values that have no place in the sheltered world of the
Silver Factory, Dylan rails in his nasal rasp against materialism, war and the
casual indifference of people like Warhol. (As if to prove Dylan’ point, Warhol
stupidly sums up the Vietnam War as “kind of neat.”)
Sedgwick soon finds herself ostracized by both men. Dylan
has no use for her vapid little circle; Warhol, portrayed as a petulant child
bereft of any emotion save jealousy, can’t stomach the idea of another man in
her life. Sinking under the weight of her chemical dependencies and cut off
financially from her abusive parents, Sedgwick spirals out of control. (In
fact, after a fleeting stab at sobriety during which she returned to her Santa
Barbara home and entered rehab, she married a fellow patient in 1970. A year
later, at 28, she died of an overdose.)
As Sedgwick, Sienna Miller delivers a desperate
performance perfectly suited to the ever-changing tone of the material, but
Factory Girl proves unworthy of her or Pearce’s efforts. Early on, director
George Hickenlooper’s film struggles to find rhythm and purpose, summarizing
Sedgwick’s relationship with Warhol through a series of photographic montages
as superficial and unrevealing as the characters themselves.
It is only later, when Hickenlooper focuses on the rift
between Dylan, Sedgwick and Warhol that Factory Girl develops any dramatic
tension. (It doesn’t help that Dylan is reduced, in a regrettably misguided
turn by Hayden Christensen, to a one-dimensional fount of countercultural
wisdom.) From there, Sedgwick’s decline is swift, and the tragedy of her story
finally emerges. She is a lost soul who is abandoned by her friends once the
money has gone and the glamour has faded. Warhol comes across as particularly
callous. “I didn’t really know her,” he says, explaining that he would mourn
Sedgwick’s death, but that it would be much easier not to.
