Directed by George Hickerlooper and staring Cienna Miller, Guy Pierce, Hayden Christensen.

I don’t know you, you’re just an annonymous internet surfing lurking my blog, I doubt we’ve ever met, but all that aside I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you would hate this film I just saw called Factory Girl. It’s pretentious and self important, and the flawed heroine is ultimatly unsymathetic. But the point that I’m going to make eventually is that you should give it a chance and see it anyways.

You could say that it’s a biopic of sorts documenting the high society adventures of Edie Sedgwick played by Cienna Miller. Miller plays her character as a bit of a cypher, a woman who needs to be all things to all people, one could get the impression she is courting the affections of the entire world. She is simultaneously a herion, a fascinatingly flawed character, a stuck up brat, and a hapless sap. She falls in with a crowd of bohemian future celebrities drifting in orbit around Andy Warhol played by Guy Pearce who creates a performance that’s part impression and part parody. His character is the lynch pin of the film so it’s fortunate that his is probably the best performance in the show.

Andy Warhol’s been played by a variety of actors over the years; Crispin Glover, Jared Harris, David Bowie, Sean Gregory Sullivan (I’m just pretending I know who that is). Of all of these actors I think that Pearce gets it most right. He’s got the aloofness, the self obsession, the veneer of glamour, and at the same time Pierce reminds us this great artist was also a savvy business man. Down beneth the image there’s a guy with bills to pay, girls he wants to fuck, he’s got dreams and ambitions and fears and neuroses. There are great scenes that remind us of the money and resources that go into sustaining the good life, and the pressure to keep it up. We see heiresses struggling to pay their rent and superstars haggling over three dollars at the flea market. Warhol’s art and films may have left a huge impression on the world but as a night out at the cinema they’re a pretty tough sell and the film shows us an Andy Warhol whose concerned over this. This life style for all it’s glitz, is the merely the traipings of a career which is not as lucrative as it might sometimes appear.

In one of the more memorable scenes, the film introduces us to Eidie’s father, an oil tycoon and one of the few non artists in the film. He’s portrayed as an asshole, but with a subtlty that’s not necessarily characteristic of the entire film we’re reminded that the artist and the bussiness man have more in common with each other than they’d probably like to admit. They’re both trying to make a buck with they’re schemes, on their own terms rather than playing by the rules. The film presents an unflatering portrait of the suit types but it reminds us that the Andy Warhols of the world are of the same breed.

It’s not until about an hour in that Hayden Christiansen shows up as Bob Dylan, in a part that’s not as large as the trailer suggest but central to the film nonetheless. Christensen’s performance has almost nothing to do with the real Dylan, it’s influenced more by James Dean than anything else. Dylan is there to represent an opposing force to Warhol. A character who’s diametrically opposed to Andy Warhol while being exactly the same. They’re both huge ego’s, telented men of vision who are completely sold on the world’s image of who they are. The film may over state this point but it has a lot of fun with it as well. By far the films best scene comes during an emotionally devestating (for Edie) collision of personility when Dylan shows up at the factory and confronts and humiliates Warhol with the effortless and intimidating cool of a play ground bully. Dylan and Warhol did have a meeting at the factory but the scene here is mostly fictionalized (I was surpised it find it happened at all). This is less a proper biopic and more the type of story Dostoyevsky used to write, where characters personify epic ideas and clash on the stage of personality. Edie Sedgwick is less the protagonist and more casuality of war, sthe’s the scorched battleground upon which a war of egos is fought.
The movie has it’s share of pretentiousness, it holds it’s characters on too high a pedistal, it undermines it’s points with too much emphasis but I can’t hate any film that’s this in love with itself and its characters. The movie is a celebration of the life style and the veneer of celebrity. Self absorbtion, narcisism, drug addled misadventures, sexual promiscuity , asshole affected aristocratic accents; all of these things are unabashedly celebrated. These are people who’ve cast themselves in roles, who see themselves through the lense of their public personas. And that lack of self ultimately is Sedgwick’s undoing.

While watching Factory Girl I was reminded of one of my favorite films from last year The Devil and Daniel Johnston. Both movies celebrate the artistic process while condemning those driven by the need to create. It’s anchored by three fantastic lead performances and a compelling narrative. It’s directed by George Hickenlooper who has had a long career directing films I’ve never heard of. He brings an appropriate style of 60’s era avante-gard arstysiness and a keen insight into what makes these characters in this story interesting. Factory Girl has earned a bad rap on rotten tomatoes but it’s a film I haven’t been able to get out of my head. For all its flaws I found it tragic, romantic and profound.

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