I think Sienna Miller does a really nice job of capturing Edie Sedgwick, who really was the fore-runner to Paris Hilton and a lot of other people who are just famous for being famous.
Factory Girl (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:34
Fresh:5
Rotten:29
Average Rating:4.6/10
Consensus: Despite a dedicated performance by Sienna Miller, Factory Girl delves only superficially into her character, and ultimately fails to tell a coherent story.
Theatrical Release:Dec 29, 2006 Limited
Box Office: $1,566,027
Synopsis: Best known for playing muse to Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick was a dazzling young socialite who found herself at the apex of the pop art scene in 1960s New York. In FACTORY GIRL, Sienna Miller is the... Best known for playing muse to Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick was a dazzling young socialite who found herself at the apex of the pop art scene in 1960s New York. In FACTORY GIRL, Sienna Miller is the enchanting, enigmatic Edie, offering a moving characterization of the extremely troubled model/actress. The film kicks off as Edie, the daughter of a well-to-do horse rancher, leaves art school and moves to Manhattan in the mid-'60s. Her friend Chuck Wein (Jimmy Fallon) introduces her to Andy Warhol (Guy Pearce), and Andy is immediately taken with the waifish, wealthy Edie. He welcomes her into his Factory, the silver aluminum-foil covered loft where an assortment of artists and oddballs assisted him with his projects. Edie quickly falls into the hard partying, drug-addled scene, starring in Andy's experimental films and becoming his constant companion. She becomes well-known for her unique style, and the fashion industry taps her as its very first "It" girl. Edie is flying high on Andy, speed, and stardom, when she happens to meet the Bob Dylan-esque "Folksinger" (Hayden Christensen). She falls in love with him, and in doing so, falls out of Andy's favor. Her drug addiction spirals out of control, her parents cut off her cash flow, and her very bright star seems to burn out almost as quickly as it rose. As with most biopics, people are sure to quibble over the accuracy of FACTORY GIRL, and whether it offers fair portrayals of so many larger-than-life cultural icons. However, viewers are sure to agree that it makes a poignant statement about the pitfalls of fame. When Warhol tells Edie's mother that her daughter is going to be "super famous", Mrs. Sedgwick coldly responds: "And what exactly would be the value of that?" Judging from the very tragic, short life of Edie, there wasn't much value in it at all. [More]
Starring: Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, Hayden Christensen, Jimmy Fallon
Starring: Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, Hayden Christensen, Jimmy Fallon, Peter Bogdanovich, Beth Grant, Illeana Douglas, Mary-Kate Olsen, Mena Suvari, Tommy Perna, Samantha Maloney, Captain Mauzner, Daniel Newman, Don Novello, Tara Summers, Alexi Wasser, Colleen Camp
Director: George Hickenlooper
Director: George Hickenlooper
Screenwriter: Captain Mauzner
Producer: Aaron Richard Golub, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein
Screenwriter: Captain Mauzner
Story: Simon Monjack
Screenwriter: Aaron Richard Golub
Studio: Weinstein Company
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Reviews for Factory Girl
When Sedgwick's whirl of liberation turns into addiction, clichés stall the plot.
You feel as if either you or the filmmakers have missed the point, if there ever actually was one.
Thanks to the flashy work of the film's two editors and cinematographer, style trumps substance. Or perhaps it merely masks the lack of it.
Not everyone is crushed by fame, but almost everyone is flattened by it.
The film never provides compelling reasons to care about the fate of this poor little rich girl.
Director George Hickenlooper incessantly switches between black-and-white, grained-out, color-saturated, handheld and fuzzy shots. He's not so much making a movie as an audition tape for the cameraman's guild.
Whatever shrewdness or charm Sedgwick possessed that caused people to believe that she was a revolutionary figure in New York night life, it doesn’t come through in this movie.
Tragedy requires us to genuinely care about the character and Factory Girl fails in that regard, despite Miller's emphatic performance.
Miller gets old and used up before our eyes, and we not only see it, we see what it means to experience it. This is a movie about power, and its spectacle is that of a woman losing all of it.
Despite strong performances by Sienna Miller as the quintessential '60s It Girl and Guy Pearce as FrankenArtist Andy, the film ultimately doesn't have much to say about the people it purports to depict or the tumultuous times in which they lived.
Less a movie than a montage, the swinging sixties shot in an arc both tiny and trite.
Factory Girl is not, strictly speaking, a bad movie. It's something worse: an irredeemably banal drama about some of the most protean, contradictory creative forces of the 1960s.
Factory Girl isn't a penetrating chronicle of Sedgwick's life so much as a production designer's highlights reel.
Cautionary tale? Fashion show? Love story? Excuse for groovy soundtrack? George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl is a little of each, but not enough of any to make a satisfying film story.
Hickenlooper likes to observe chaos and artistic extremes with a friendly eye, and there are hints all through Factory Girl of the shattering film it could have been. But the story falls too easily into 'live fast, die young' laments and postures.
This is juicy stuff, but the filmmakers have absolutely no idea what to do with it.
The historical Edie Sedgwick was a fascinating figure and at no time was she more interesting than when she was a member of Warhol's Factory. It's too bad Factory Girl fails to make this woman compelling in these circumstances.
Sienna Miller, with her glossed and dimpled party-girl smile, looks so much like the actual Edie Sedgwick that you may think, at moments, that you're seeing the real thing. That spooky look-alike allure does a lot for the movie.
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