It’s kind of creepy how much Sienna Miller looks like Edie Sedgwick, the subject of director George Hickenlooper’s 2006 bio flick Factory Girl. It’s in the eyes and the smile, a kind of homespun innocence peeking through a veneer of confidence and power. The resemblance is uncanny, and if visual affinity were the soul criterion used to judge this kind of film, Factory Girl would have been a huge success.

Factory Girl recounts the meteoric rise and ensuing precipitous fall of society girl turned pop culture icon Edie Sedgwick. You’ve heard this one before. In a nutshell, a fame seeking but psychologically ill-equipped girl arrives in the Big City, is taken under the wing of a successful artist/father figure, becomes an overnight sensation, finds that stardom can’t fill the gaping hole inside her, turns to drugs, falls out of favor and finally flames out in relative obscurity. It’s a drama that’s practically endemic to our media saturated age and one that plays out with slight variations on our televisions over and over again. Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Janis Joplin, Dana Plato, Anna Nichole Smith.  Lohan? Hilton? Spears? To contemporary eyes, the story is so rote and so clichéd that it’s nearly incapable of eliciting any real excitement.

At the very least, Factory Girl has the right elements in place. Sedgwick ran with the mid-sixties New York glitterati, first as Andy Warhol’s muse and later as Bob Dylan’s girlfriend. She was the ultimate groovy chick who spawned the likes of Twiggy and Goldie Hawn. Her fame was brief and searing, so much so that Warhol is reputed to have coined his “everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes” quote with her in mind and Dylan penned his song Like a Rolling Stone about her. She was at the forefront of fashion and had all the right connections. If there was ever a personality ripe for a biographical film, Sedgwick was it.

Visually, Factory Girl is very refined. The production design is practically unimpeachable, from the costumes and set designs right down to the grainy, jittery look of the film itself. It seems as if every effort was made to exorcise anachronism and breathe life into the mid sixties while keeping its blemishes intact. There’s no attempt to romanticize Warhol’s Factory period, considered by many to be his most productive and significant.

As the central figure in Factory Girl, Sienna Miller has the weight of the film on her shoulders. For better or worse, the entire affair rises and falls on her acting ability. Fortunately, Miller’s performance isn’t half bad. Her range of emotion is a little limited and she looks somewhat stiff and out of her element at times, but she’s relatively convincing as Sedgwick. She seems personable and engaging, so much so that it’s easy to root for her throughout the entire first half of the film. And then, Hayden Christensen enters as a thinly disguised version of Bob Dylan and in comparison to his blocky, awkward and painfully flat performance, she looks like an Oscar worthy professional. Christiensen is so bad that he brings the film to a dead stop every time he’s on screen.

Beyond Sedgwick, the most critical character to get right in Factory Girl is Andy Warhol. Crispin Glover, Jared Harris, David Bowie and a handful of others have played him on the big screen and the choice of Guy Pearce seems a little odd. But Pearce delivers an impeccable portrayal. He inhabits Warhol in the same way that Warhol clothed himself in his trademark silver wig. You can clearly see that it’s fake but it seems so appropriate that it doesn’t matter. Pearce has Warhol’s mannerisms down pat. His vocal cadence, the way he carries himself, the ability to project Warhol’s improbable charisma, come together to override any differences in size and physique. Had Pearce failed, the entire film could have completely collapsed. Not only is Pearce’s Warhol arguably the best ever committed to film, he virtually steals the movie, making it more Andy Warhol’s story than Edie Sedgwick’s.

Ultimately, the most problematic element of Factory Girl is its dramatic construction. We get all the main incidents of Sedgwick’s story but they’re patched together in a cold, unsympathetic way. We never get to identify with her, feel her pain or become invested in her story. The film never encourages us to get on her side. Rather, it feels like a series of historic reconstructions. The filmmakers seem to have been so focused on nailing the authenticity that they forgot to make the story compelling. Sedgwick’s story is fascinating, but Factory Girl robs it of its relatability and instead offers what amounts to a dull forensic reconstruction like something out of Unsolved Mysteries or the E! True Hollywood Story.

Video Presentation
As I mentioned earlier in the review, Factory Girl is made to look like period photographs and video. It’s a mix of color and black and white, at times over saturated, always very grainy. The transfer comes from what appear to be pristine elements so you get the film exactly as it appeared in theaters.

Audio Presentation
As with practically every DVD release these days, the audio track is a full 5.1 surround mix. Factory Girl is a dialogue-driven movie though, so the surrounds are mostly unused. Music and sound effects spill out of the main sound stage from time to time but it’s nothing especially spectacular. It’s a crisp and clean track with nicely balanced dialogue and music; just what you’d expect.

Extras
Commentary by Director George Hickenlooper – The commentary is a little bittersweet in light of what I consider the deep failures of the film. Hickenlooper is obviously obsessed with Sedgwick’s story and clearly made a valiant effort to bring it to life. His commentary is focused primarily on outlining the historical context of each scene. If you know nothing about Warhol and Sedgwick the track is worth listening to. He provides a lot more insight in the commentary than he does in the film.

Deleted Scene with Optional Director’s Commentary – This DVD bills itself as the “sexy, uncut and unrated edition,” meaning that virtually every cut scene is restored to the film in this version. Adding all that footage back in, most of it extended shots of naked flesh doesn’t really benefit the movie. Neither does this brief outtake.

The Real Edie – An Inside Look at the Life of Edie Sedgwick – Clocking in at about half an hour, this featurette is everything that the film should have been. It includes interviews with Sedgwick’s contemporaries, including her brother Jonathan Sedgwick, her friends Richie Berlin, Danny Fields, Sam Green, photographer Nat Finkelstein and others.  The interviews are cut together with clips from the film and photos of Sedgwick. In addition to interesting comments from all the participants there’s a side-by-side comparison of period images with Factory Girl’s reconstructions. It’s easily the most valuable extra on the disc.

Guy Pearce’s Video Diary – This twenty-minute segment is a nice selection of behind the scenes footage, ostensibly shot by Guy Pearce but actually comprising footage taken by a number of people.  

Sienna Miller’s Audition Tape – Just what it sounds like, this is video of Sienna Miller auditioning for the part of Edie Sedgwick. It’s not a bad performance, but you can see that she didn’t really build on it much in the actual movie. 

Making Factory Girl – At a brief ten minutes, this is the typical electronic press kit material that shows up on virtually every DVD these days. It’s a fluff piece that doesn’t add anything significant to the proceedings. 

Theatrical Trailer – The theatrical trailer in anamorphic format.

Conclusion