Factory Girl

Not being a connoisseur of the celebrity demimonde, I can’t claim to have any special knowledge of Edie Sedgwick and her rise and fall in the Warhol factory. But I know enough about artists, life at the margins and basic human behaviour to call bullshit on George Hickenlooper’s travesty version of her scene. Sedgwick (played by Sienna Miller) was of course, the "poor little rich girl” who, after suffering at the hands of her old money father and living in and out of institutions since a very young age, went to New York, fell in with Andy Warhol (Guy Pearce) and began her rendezvous with fame and drug addiction. Miller and Pearce do what they can with their roles but they’re fighting an uphill battle with Hickenlooper at the helm. He brings a "golly, gee whiz” attitude to the proceedings that’s totally at odds with the jaded art milieu, Warhol’s aesthetic, the drug culture and just about anything else you can name. He can’t even shatter icons properly — though the artist’s reputation is tarnished for the eventual betrayal of Sedgwick, the director and screenwriter Captain Mauzner still believe that his art was sui generis, without context or peer. Mauzner diligently humiliates the actors with dialogue about how Warhol "changed the world” and "threw America back in its face,” and though Hayden Christensen (as a Dylan clone) needs no help in that department the rest of the cast deserved better. Extras include a commentary by Hickenlooper, who tells you exactly what scenes were restored for this new unrated version, a series of interviews with Sedgwick’s contemporaries that I fear merely scratches the surface, the usual convivial "making of” doc, Guy Pearce’s video diary (mostly the cast cutting up), Miller’s audition tape and one deleted scene with optional director commentary.