It would surprise me to discover that any more than half of the events in the Edie Sedgwick/Andy Warhol tribute film Factory Girl were actually true. In what could be 2007’s early response to the question ‘How do you make a biopic more polarizing than Fur?,” director George Hickenlooper disregards factual accuracy and instead produces a manic and strange art film more akin to Warhol’s own indulgent and unreal movies than any standard biographical work.Much like the surreal and underappreciated Steven Shainberg film, Factory Girl exhibits an approximation of its subjects’ spirit by any means necessary. Hickenlooper has shattered any and all austere notions of preserving a true to life legacy, alternatively embracing a frantic, futile sense of fun and destruction that could not be more appropriate for the era. Factory Girl is a ballsy glam-art portrait of an underground cinema queen. If Warhol and Sedgwick had set out to make a film about their own lives, it could very well have been something as glamorous, ridiculous, and surprisingly tender as this one.
It’s far from an even film. At times, it’s sickeningly enraptured in its own melodrama, but one gets the feeling that its flamboyant subjects wouldn’t have it any other way. Guy Pearce is a scene stealing wonder as the pale and awkward Warhol whom he imbues with both a vicious wit and a quiet sadness. He’s a cryptic genius hidden behind tinted glasses with a passionate yet vacuous obsession for glamour that masks a deeper curiosity for the surface layer of humanity. Equally magnetic and astounding is Miller as Sedgwick, an actress, model, and professional muse. She’s a blonde waif with a crackling voice and vulnerable eyes. The sheer preciseness with which Miller matches some of the expressions in Sedgwick’s more famous photos is remarkable. She beautifully catches the subtle flickers of terror across Edie's face as she innocently agrees to be immortalized by Warhol and join in on the drugs and parties of the factory.
If there’s a flaw in the acting it comes from supporting player Hayden Christensen who plays a “Bob Dylan-esque” character whose name is never actually spoken aloud in the film. He saunters in about halfway through the movie and bursts its bubble quite readily. His character seems meant to offer Edie a chance to escape the surface oriented insincerity of her newfound friends, but Christensen is so unbelievable and Miller possesses such strong chemistry with Pearce that it’s hard to want anything more than for her to return to the party.
The final third of the film is mostly a stagy, sort of ludicrous depiction of Sedgwick’s spiral into drug addiction and personal devastation. It wears itself out relatively soon, but if you stick with it through its leaps over the top, you’ll find that it lands itself quite nicely in the end. This is not a film meant to be moderately enjoyed by all. You’ll either adore its wicked melancholic ways or you’ll just discard it as trash (as many already have). Either way, it’s bound to be unlike anything you’ve ever seen and, to quote Miller as Sedgwick, “that in itself is a sign of brilliance. Don’t you think?”
Grade: B+
