Factory Girl

 1.5/4

Starring: Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, Hayden Christensen, Shawn Hatosy, Jimmy Fallon

Rated R for Pervasive Drug Use, Strong Sexual Content, Nudity and Language

It is a common misconception that all a biopic needs to do is tell what happened to the subject.  It isn't.  The audience can get that from Wikipedia.  What matters is that the story tell who they are.  Biopics are character studies; the events from the person's life are of secondary importance to establishing who the person is and the forces that drove them.  Good biopics, such as "Schindler's List" or "Malcolm X" understood this.  "Factory Girl," which is based on the life of socialite and one-time muse of Andy Warhol, does not, and it is one of the many problems that afflict this film.

Edie Sedgwick (Miller) was a wealthy heiress who went to art school then moved to the Big Apple to seek fame and fortune.  It was there that she met Andy Warhol (Pearce), the revolutionary who turned the art world upside down.  From the moment he saw Edie, Warhol was obsessed with her and he was determined to make her a star.  For a while, things were great and they were the talk of the town.  Enter Billy Quinn (Christensen), the alter-ego of Bob Dylan (a connection the film does little to hid).  He's cool cat who doesn't care about anything (and wants everyone to know it) and scorns Warhol.  Edie becomes smitten with him, and that doesn't sit well with the pop artist.

One of the problems with "Factory Girl" is that it doesn't have any real narrative drive.  Scenes don't logically proceed one after the other.  They just sort of happen.  That makes it difficult to remain invested in the flimsy narrative.  Or to even follow along.  A set trajectory for the plot isn't necessary (the best movies do not feel like they have one), but the audience has to see a story being told, not just a series of scenes thrown at the screen.  The wobbly screenplay is mostly at fault but the lackluster direction by George Hickenlooper doesn't escape blame.

On the acting front, there's Sienna Miller and Guy Pearce.  Everyone else is just a sideshow.  Sienna Miller leaps into the role of the troubled, tragic Edie with what can only be described as heroic abandon.  She disappears into the role of the innocent woman who was devoured by array of narcissists and predators she believed were her friends.  She gives depth and feeling that is certainly not on the page; her story is wrenching and Miller's work makes one wish that the writing supported her.  As for her co-star, the always incredible Guy Pearce, I'll use James Berardinelli's words: "Depending on your view of Andy Warhol, 'Factory Girl' is either a dead-on portrayal or outright character assassination."  He goes on to say that the artist is a "vile, damned creature" with no humanity and a "parasite."  It's hard to argue with that description.  Pearce plays him as a man who is so cold, so superficial and so arrogant that evil seems to be all that's left.  The third member of the trio, Hayden Christensen, does not match up.  As Bob Dylan in everything buy name, he's so bad that he appears to have been spliced in from a "Saturday Night Live" sketch.  It's almost impossible to take him seriously.

I'd say that this movie has the pieces to work, but that would be a lie.  All it has are Sienna Miller and Guy Pearce, both of whom deserve to be in a better movie about Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol.  "Factory Girl" is a movie that bored me and forced me to spend two hours with a bunch of people I would have paid to get away from.  One wishes Edie could have done the same thing.

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