Factory Girl

Factory Girl is a 2006 biopic of actress, model and muse Edie Sedgewick, and her relationship with Andy Warhol. Sedgewick first met Warhol whilst working as an art student in cambridge, she moves to New York City in order to pursue her career as an artist, she ended up appearing is a number of his films during the 1960's and became his muse for a while. Her relationship with Warhol led to her becoming a worldwide celebrity and icon, and she tragically passed away in 1971 at the age of 28.

The film is shot very much like a documentary, the camera, whilst always being in the right place at the right time, is never flashy, and never overbearing, this gives the whole film a cinema verité feel, where the camera is simply observing, and is never a feature of the film. The narrative of the film is also documentary like, as in Grey Gardens, the cameras simply roll and watch the drama play out, there is no attempt to streamline the film into a distinct and linear narrative, whilst the action is all chronological, there are huge jumps in time and narrative and the film takes place over an indeterminate period of time.

The film features undeniably fine performances, and Sienna Miller is surprisingly good in the leading role, i will admit to not having seen a lot of her work, and knowing of her largely from her relationship with Jude Law, her affair with Daniel Craig and her featuring in The September Issue, however she is oddly perfect in the role of Edie Sedgewick, a woman who is fragile, vapid and foolish, who places all her trust in Warhol at the begining of the film, and whose blind faith will ultimately lead to her being cast off and left for ruin. Despite the film being filmed and told in a cinema verité style, the film is nonetheless very much told from Edie's point of view, the audience is expected to understand and empathize with her despite the carelessness of her actions, and we are supposed to blame her entourage for her situation, and her subsequent decay.

However the real star of this picture is Guy Pearce, who plays Andy Warhol, few actors have the confidence to take on such a hugely iconic and challenging role, and yet Pearce pulls it off with style and panache. What is so impressive about his performance is that we really feel like we know him, despite the fact that he rarely, if ever takes off his sunglasses, Pearce's performance is so deft and powerful that he takes an icon down from his pedestal, and makes him human, he penetrates the sunglasses and the wigs, the blind stares and ironic glazed voice and makes a real character whilst remaining faithful to the status of such a powerful and influential artists.

Factory Girl is a film which succeeds on the strength of it's performances and its visual pastiche, whilst the story suffers, and is reduced to a mere series of vignettes, the lack of narrative is interesting to follow and gives the film an interesting flair, however the film is simply unable to craft a convincing or understandable story from it's wonky narrative. Rating: C+

Edie Sedgwick: To me, New York was Jackson Pollock sipping vodka and dripping paint onto a raw canvas.