Dir.
George Hickenlooper, US, 2006, 90 mins
Cast: Guy Pearce, Sienna Miller, Hayden Christensen
Review by Carol Allen
The Factory of the title is Andy Warhol's
bohemian artistic commune,which he set up in a former downtown
New York hat factory in the '60s. It became a centre for
an assortment of musicians, poets, artists, actors and hangers
on, helping Warhol for little or no payment it appears to
make his weird but lucrative movies during the day and indulge
in glamorous, speed fuelled partying all night long. The
girl of the title is poor little rich girl Edie Sedgwick
(Miller), who drops out of art school, goes to the big city
with her best friend Chuck Wein (Jimmy Fallon), drops into
the Factory and becomes for a while one of Warhol's biggest
stars and a focus of media attention.
The story is framed by scenes of Edie
in therapy in California in 1970. "I won't live past 30," she announces
and she's correct. A year later she died of a barbiturate
overdose at the age of 28. Miller is actually rather good
in the role. Dressed as a high fashion plate for '60s clothes
and make up, she is still a fragile, vulnerable figure, dazzled
by the spurious glamour of Warhol's world as she tries and
fails to "find herself", after what she claims
was a childhood of sexual abuse by her arrogant and bullying
father (James Naughton). Pierce captures Warhol's physical
persona perfectly – pallid face and hair, poseur manner – but
the team who wrote the screenplay (Captain Mauzner, Simon
Monjack and Aaron Richard Golub) appear to have no liking
for the man, in that he comes over as a totally unlikeable
figure, fascinated by Edie while he can use her and rejecting
her callously once her money and her value to him are burnt
out.
Christensen plays the unnamed pop
star with whom she has an affair, who may or may not be
based on Bob Dylan, someone who did know her but was in
fact one of the pop stars she probably didn't have an affair
with. In spite of the cumbersome collection of '60s clichés he's lumbered with – leather
gear, harmonica, powerful motor bike and pretentious spoutings
about inner truth and such – Christensen makes him
a warm, sensual and protective knight in black-leather armour
trying to rescue her from the Warhol dragon and the relationship
between him and Edie is rather touching.
While effectively capturing the superficiality
and frantic pace of the scene, the film pointedly ignores
any contribution Warhol made to art itself. But then this
is Edie's story from Edie's point of view. Miller proved
herself a good actress in the West End production of "As You Like It",
when the media was more interested in her personal life than
her performance. This film, in spite of its shortcomings,
gives her a chance to demonstrate once again that she's a
lot more than just a pretty face.
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