LAURA JOHNSON
A&E Assistant
When the artsy biopic “Factory Girl” was released, the film quietly entered theaters. For the people who are familiar with Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick, this was a monumental event. To everyone else, it didn’t much matter.
As we are in the tumultuous wake of Anna Nicole Smith’s untimely death, it seems yet another pop culture icon has left us. In the 1950s it was Marilyn Monroe, but in the 1960s it was Edie Sedgwick, the fashion icon debutante extraordinaire who was the muse of Warhol and his infamous art studio, which he dubbed his “Factory.”
“Factory Girl” spills the story of the unfortunate events leading up to Sedgwick’s untimely death by drug overdose when she was just 28 years old. Though her life was brief, she was a woman who was always described as the life of the party.
Sienna Miller, who plays Sedgwick, has said she wanted to immerse herself the role of the famed model. To do so, she listened to tapes of the young New York socialite’s voice, perfecting every little voice inflection and nuance. Slimming down to a size zero, cutting her hair in a mod slick-back and growing her eyebrows thicker than inchworms, Miller desperately tries to prove that she is more than just that girl who was engaged to Jude Law.
The film is brimming with ridiculously good looking people. The cast is lead by Miller and features Guy Pearce sporting a white wig as Warhol, Hayden Christensen playing Billy Quinn (who has an uncanny resemblance to Bob Dylan) and Jimmy Fallon as Sedgwick’s best guy pal, Chuck Wein.
The movie is an art film. Ritzy and haphazardly pasted together, “Factory Girl” explores the inner workings of the New York Pop Art scene in the 1960s and Edie’s demise into the world of drugs. Cigarettes and martinis are the fuel of the Factory. Scenes depicting Sedgwick and friends sticking Speed-filled syringes into their behinds are especially gruesome but show firsthand what it was like to be part of Warhol’s entourage.
The audience also watches when Warhol first meets Sedgwick. The pop artist takes her into his lair of social misfits and makes her the superstar of Manhattan. But when a new beau Billy steps onto the scene, life gets rather prickly between Sedgwick and Warhol, and things spiral out of control.
While Warhol used to find Sedgwick fascinating, using her in many of his performance art films, he soon grows bored with her and leaves her to deal with her own troubles and addictions, most of which he had a hand in creating. In one scene in a confessional, Warhol says to a priest, “She used to be so beautiful and now she’s just so ugly and I just don’t get it, ya know?”
Warhol’s own skewed obsession with beauty is portrayed in the film as a side effect of his inability to deal with the fact that he, in his own words, “is ugly and therefore, can only be an artist.”
However rough and botched the final product is — with scenes in the film ranging from melodramatic “blame it on the horrible childhood” and extremely artsy documentary-style vignettes that leave an uneven sort of feel — coolness seems to ooze from every frame. While Miller and Pearce slightly buckle under the burden of carrying the film, as every other actor seems lost in characters too underdeveloped to truly comprehend, there are some redeeming qualities to “Factory Girl.”
Wading through the tomfoolery of it all, the audience is asked to examine what in their minds is beautiful. Part of us wants to be like Sedgwick, where we can be free to do anything, but the question arises, how far are we willing to go?
Director George Hickenlooper’s vision for the piece may have been different from what others had in mind when talks of a Sedgwick film first came into being. Maybe that is why, even up until December, they were still going into the studio to do re-shoots. Hickenlooper wanted it to be perfect. Not only for Miller’s sake, as it has been said she was hoping to be considered for an Oscar for the role, but also for the many Sedgwick fans.
This may not be the most significant movie ever to be made, and Sedgwick is not the only celebrity to die of a drug overdose. Yet in her short time on this earth, people were fascinated by her and that is what makes her important.
“Factory Girl” is not perfect, not even close, but those who have a passion for understanding the lives of once-great celebrities will get it and dwell on it for days after they leave the theater.
02-15-2007