Factory Girl

Plot synopsis:
Edie Sedgwick (Sienna Miller) is a young heiress studying art in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She moves to New York City, where she is introduced to pop art painter and film-maker Andy Warhol (Guy Pearce). Intrigued by the beautiful socialite, he asks her to perform in one of his underground movies. Soon she is spending time with him at the Factory, his studio and also the hangout of a group of eccentrics, some of them drug addicts. Her status as Warhol superstar and success as a fashion model earn her popularity and international attention.
Her Cambridge friend Syd introduces her to poet and singer Billy Quinn (Hayden Christensen), a character based on Bob Dylan. Andy becomes jealous, so Edie tries but fails to keep her love affair with Billy a secret. To reconcile them, she arranges a meeting. Although he agrees to be filmed by Andy, when Billy visits the studio he shows his contempt. As he is leaving, she tries once more to make peace, but Billy calls Andy a "bloodsucker" who will "kill" her. Seeing that she will stay, he kisses her forehead.
As addiction takes its toll, Edie's relationship with Andy deteriorates. One night while in a drug-induced stupor, she falls asleep while smoking a cigarette and nearly dies in the ensuing fire. Vogue refuses to hire her; editor Diana Vreeland (Ileana Douglas) explaining that Edie is considered "vulgar". Interrupting a luncheon of Andy and his friends, she demands to be paid and accuses him of ruining her.
When Syd sees her again, she has become a prostitute. In a taxi, he shows Edie, who is very depressed, a photo of herself when they were art students. He says that he fell in love with her then, and tells her that she can still be an artist. She says that she cannot bear her loneliness but interrupts him, asking the driver, "Can we go?" When the driver says that they are stuck in a traffic jam, she leaves the cab and runs frantically down the street. The scene changes to a hospital, years in the future. She tells an interviewer that she is overcoming her addiction and is glad to be home in Santa Barbara. The closing caption explain the last few years, her struggle to control drug abuse and her marriage to another patient, which ended in less than four months when she died of an overdose.

Tags: romantic, storytelling, flashback

Review:
In reality, she was rejected by the factory friends and many others for the drugs she brought with her everywhere, she was not introduced to them at the factory as the movie shows.Hickenlooper seems to me to be trying to say that Edie Sedgwick, that fresh faced wasp in knee socks and pearls who left Cambridge with sketches tucked under her arms could have potentially had a wonderful and peaceful life, even a stable marriage with Bob Dylan had she only not met Andy Warhol and been subject of those movies.I have a problem with this film because I am so interested, most people are, in the real Edie Sedgwick and I agree with another poster who suggested you see Ciao!Manhattan to get a better sense of who she was.
If you want a tragic love-story about a good girl who chose the wrong guy, watch Factory Girl.The real Edie Sedgwick was a person whose hystrionics and drugs were symptoms of a soul that was always trying to fly away, for her the world was always too small and her pain was always too big, and she lived her life as though she dreamed of having her wings singed flying too close to the sun..
Had Factory Girl functioned as a GOOD FILM Guy Pearce would have received much more acclaim.As for Hayden Christensen, I like him alright as an actor but his role as the Bob Dylan-esquire Musician just wasn't allowed much room.
(Possible spoilers, though unlikely)Okay, let me say that I enjoyed Factory Girl for what it is and think it is worth renting.The story stars Sienna Miller as the fated Edie Sedgwick and Guy Pearace as vapid pop culture icon, Andy Warhol.The movie isn't nearly as close to as bad as critics claim it is.
The result feels energetic but ultimately rather cursory in the way he depicts the Manhattan party scene in the mid-1960's, in particular, the Factory, where Warhol let his coterie of drug-addicted fame-seekers gather to make virtually unwatchable films that reflect their constant state of ennui.With her big raccoon eyes, pre-punk hairdo and flashing smile, Miller bears such a striking resemblance to the real-life Sedgwick that she carries much of the film by the sheer will of her character's Holly Golightly-like sense of exalted self-worth.
I myself have been on Adderall (for ADHD) for a very brief period in the 90s, and it was really horrible...I can't possibly imagine anyone wanting to be on that thing.In the 90s I knew a guy who had been Warhol's room mate in the 1950s and a very, very minor character in Andy's later life, I asked him once if he ever knew Edie, and he just groaned and said, "she was the MOST BORING girl I ever met in my life." End of discussion..
It's also where Edie Sedgwick spent most of her time as Warhol turned her into a starlet on his silver screen and as the original Paris Hilton she became famous for being famous, complete with trust fund and a nasty drug habit courtesy of Andy and his "Warhol Superstars".Andy Warhol dove into most things artistic; shaping Pop Art, producing The Velvet Underground, and making his own films.
Denying a relationship with Sedgwick, Bob Dylan's lawyers refused his inclusion in the film but he represents the possible redemption for the spiraling "Poor Little Rich Girl".Overall, Factory Girl has trouble navigating it's plot shifting to and from Edie as the art that Andy creates, her personal journey, and the people around them both, all topped by a future Miss Sedgwick revealing the story to a psychiatrist in rehab.There's a great movie in here somewhere but Factory Girl is not it.C Matt Watterworth http://www.theweal.com.
"Factory Girl" probably has little hope of attracting much attention from movie-goers as well.While we do spend a good portion of the film in The Factory, this is more the tragic story of Edie, rather than an insightful look at Warhol's art.
Hayden Christensen as Bob Dylan, sorry, "Billy Quinn," comes off as an opinionated (though incredibly fit and Gentile) jerk with a guitar, Guy Pearce is too attractive for Andy, while Sienna Miller doesn't have Edie's soft beauty.The greatest crime is that this will be many people's first introduction to Edie Sedgwick, and they will go away with an impression of a simple, disposable girl - with none of her glamour, whose problems can be neatly wrapped up in a few lines about her father.
it is a beautiful, artful depiction of three people: andy warhol, edie, and bob Dylan (billy quinn).many will say that it is not the accurate, hard fact bio pic that many people rely on such to be; but like the doors, it paints artful depictions of such iconic legends.all performances are done well.
It's entertaining and worth watching for two very good performances by Guy Pearce and Sienna Miller.It's not art, it's just a movie, albeit a superficial one..
The filmmakers have done the impossible: taken the story of Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol's muse and the object of underground fascination for Forty YEARS and produced a movie so banal, predictable, and downright boring that the they must be applauded for even releasing it.
Guy Pierce was okay, and Hayden Christensen was not as terrible as one might think - they problem with both performances was that the script is terrible - it is hard to know if either of them could embody their roles when both men are only asked to portray very shallow caricatures of warhol and Dylan - forced to utter ridiculous dialogue that neither man would have ever said in 100 lifetimes - and stuck in a by the numbers lifetime movie about addiction - with all the insight that a television movie could muster (maybe even less insight, actually) i think Dylan does have a reason to sue - although i'm not sure it is the wisest approach - i think we just have to hope there is a special place in hades for people who make slanderous films about famous people because it is so hard to sue - and i think his suit will probably sell tickets - especially from what i could see at the screening i went to today - there were quite a few people for a late afternoon screening (1/2 to 2/3's full) - compare that to diane arbus's family which ignored fur and watched it disappear from theaters almost immediately after its release - as for sienna, she's in all of her acting class glory, looking cute in the first half of the movie and bedraggled in the second - i'm sure she and harvey were fishing for an award - but if you watch angelina jolie in gia and then watch miller in this you will see what a lightweight performance it truly is -.
The rich, young and pretty Edie Sedgwick, whose family life hides secrets that could be made into a Todd Solondz flick, goes to NYC in the 1960's and meets pop artist Andy Warhol (Guy Pearce, the only good thing about the movie).
Guy Pearce gives an excellent performance, and Sienna Miller is charming in a moronically written role, but this film, which should at the very least have been stylish and interesting, is shallow and sentimental in an offensive way.
We have to realize the exceptional talent at work here and awesome creativity on how the cast brings the hurt and pain to life; perhaps even hitting close to home to some.Accept the movie for what it is and not for what you think it should be, and you will find an amazing story, perhaps with some flaws (show me one without) and maybe at times even zooming by so fast your left trying to catch up, but it's clear that Sienna and Guy have simply made a tragic story come to life in a way that i believe only they could have; Hayden as well.
The panda-eyed, drug-abusing wash-out that is the Sedgwick nearer the end of the movie does, but the audience can hardly say anything except she brought about her own downfall: she ingratiated herself to Warhol and his world when she was a nobody without even a job, then moaned that she couldn't work when he dumped her, when in fact she was obviously unemployable because of her drug habit.The film's only real crime is perhaps that it celebrates the life of Edie rather than Andy, and that not particularly well.
Factory Girl capitalises on the name, but is mainstream through and through.If the producers had worked with people of real vision; if they had secured song rights for music by Velvet Underground and Bob Dylan (which would have helped establish historical and cultural context); if they had portrayed the beauty and sparkle of Edie Sedgwick through the eyes and genius of Warhol or someone like him; if they had made insightful recognition of her weakness and her greatness, then this could have been a work of art.
and yet they are great movies telling good stories.I didn't know anything about Edie before watching this, and didn't know a lot about Andy Warhol either.
After seeing this movie, I think I have a good feel for the sorts of things that went on back then, and the kind of people they were.This is a tale of the person Edie was, and her going to New York and getting exposed to Andy, The Factory, movies, fame, and drugs.
Miller bears an uncanny resemblance to Sedgwick and gives a striking, emotionally raw performance that deserves a much more richly imagined and vividly rendered narrative backdrop than the superficial one provided by Factory Girl.Sienna Miller captures much of Edie's physical manner and some of her voice (though she's nowhere near deep enough), but there's nothing she can do with material that requires her to mope and pout for the bulk of her screen time.A spectacle of bad accidents, VH1 aesthetics, sketchy (almost nonexistent) period detail, and armchair psychology.
Coming from a family with a history of physical abuse, mental illness and suicide and given her own fragile countenance, it ought not to surprise anybody to learn of her gradual descent into drug dependency and prostitution, stretches in sanatoriums, various drug busts and ODs – culminating in her “accidental” death from an acute overdose of prescription medicine in late 1971 at the tender age of 28… It was inevitable that a film would eventually be made about Edie Sedgwick and the end result is worth watching if hardly exhaustive of its fascinating subject and milieu: upfront are the remarkable performances of Sienna Miller (as Edie) and Guy Pearce (as Warhol) who truly inhabit their complex personalities on camera; less successful are Hayden Christensen’s stint as an angry Bob Dylan and the film’s apparent fictionalization of their consummated relationship.
Ironically enough, the film’s theatrical trailer did feature David Bowie’s “Life On Mars?” and the significance of that, in hindsight, is three-fold: that song is included in Bowie’s “Hunky Dory” album which was released in 1971 (the year of Sedgwick’s death); the same album also includes consecutively three songs which were Bowie’s musical tributes to Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan and The Velvet Underground; and Bowie himself would later portray Warhol on screen in Julian Schnabel’s BASQUIAT (1996)!!Incidentally, I currently have in my unwatched VHS pile the D.A. Pennebaker film of Dylan’s U.K. tour of 1965, DON’T LOOK BACK (1967) – at which Edie Sedgwick was present but (perhaps unsurprisingly given that Dylan was married to somebody else by the time of its release) does not appear in the finished film – and THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO (1966), Andy Warhol’s own experimental film of a performance by the iconic band given at the Factory itself.
Sienna Miller gives a surprisingly strong performance as Edie Sedgwick in 'Factory Girl' - she and Guy Pearce as (a rather sinister) Andy Warhol, are the main reasons to see the movie.
There are no surprises, except the nasty portrayal of the deceased rich and famous.This is a bio pic about Edie Sedgwick, (played magnificently by Sienna Miller) a waif-like rich girl who found favor with the celebrity media (hmmm, who does that sound like in today's culture?) in the 1960s through her association with pop artist, Andy Warhol (another great performance, this time by Guy Pearce).
The almost ridiculously heterosexual Spaniard Picasso was the last European example for American art, and it is truly apt and amusing that in the post-Eisenhower American art world Edie would be the muse/invention of an avowedly asexual homosexual - and yes, that doesn't make sense ON PURPOSE.We make our monsters and our heroes, and we hate it when they go beyond our purview and control.This movie was a mess - if it had been filmed LIKE a Warhol film I (perhaps) could have stood the ridiculousness of it all.Andy, to my mind, was the most perfect bag of dirt that the world he grew up in helped fill; and now, kids, you have Anna Nicole Smith, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton - need I continue??The patina of time will do nothing for them - because NOW 15 minutes is 15 seconds, and don't you have better things to do as time increasingly makes everything moot?.
then go F**k yourselves .1964 and young 21 years old Edie Sedgwick(Sienna Miller) is about to go to art,but her famous and rich far more about thoughts family never let her to do it.she goes party to party with her youth energy to find the gate.finally she finds Andy Warhol(Guy Pearce) who is a little bit bisexual(Jeez what a shame) and works in his independent studio named Factory.she woks in the art work(F**k if i know)a while and making underground movies with him until he meets Bob Dylan(Hayden Christensen) and they start to have relationship.after she screws up with Dylan and Andy,she starts to ruin herself with Drug Addiction and drinking problems.her family force her to rehab in a hospital in 1970.she dies in 1971 of a drug overdose.so many 28 or 27 years old people died during the start of 70 decade.Jim Morrison,Jimi Hendrix,Janis Joplin and ...
While the focus is supposed to be on Edie Sedgwick given the title, in reality, Andy Warhol as a character gets to share just about as much spotlight, probably because he's the more famous of the two, and Guy Pearce looks like a carbon copy of the real deal, taking a leaf out of Philip Seymour Hoffman's playing of Truman Capote, only with an increased amount of meanness.When the end credits rolled, interviews with real friends and relatives tell us a little bit more on Edie, but I felt it was too little too late, that the movie itself squandered this opportunity to tell a more compelling narration of her life.
Edie, played by Sienna Miller, also did a pretty good job.Other reviews of this movie, on this very message board, have Heyden's "Billy Quinn" being depicted as Bob Dylan.Not true."Billy Quinn" is Lou Reed of The Velvet Underground.Of all the actors I've seen portray Warhol...
She appeared at some of Warhol's happenings and in some of his movies That is about all of knew about Edie Sedgwick.I saw a trailer for "Factory Girl".
A common fail of biopic films is that they focus so much on the facts that they forget to portray the psychology and motivations of the person.Examples of that are Johnny and June,Ray or Nixon.But,when the biopics do not fall on that easy trap,the result is much more satisfactory and interesting,like in Kinsey,Veronica Guerin or,now,Factory Girl,which,by my point of view,is an excellent movie.This movie makes a very detailed description of the psychology of Edie Sedgwick,so we can know her very well and perfectly know her motivations.A great work from screenwriter Captain Mauzner.Another strong point on this movie are the performances from Sienna Miller and Guy Pearce.These two actors made extraordinary works on their roles because they totally became into their characters.Another case in which excellent performances are ignored by all the pathetic awards.Director George Hickenlooper made a very dynamic work which makes this film never boring and very entertaining.The only fail I found on this movie is Hayden Christensen's performance,which is pretty bad.But that fail is not too important.Factory Girl is a brilliant biopic I liked very much.I recommend it with a lot of enthusiasm..
The film never becomes too arty, while at the same time is far from being pure mainstream.It is serious entertainment with a magnificent and awe-inspiring Sienna Miller as Edie, a very versatile Guy Pearce as Andy Warhol and a surprisingly good Hayden Christenson as Billy Quinn (alias Bob. D.)..
Sienna Miller is believable and vulnerable as Edie Sedgwick, Guy Pearce as Andy Warhol is probably the core, but not the sole, reason to see the movie , Illeana Douglas and Mena Souvari are unrecognizable and Hayden Christensen, who plays the celebrity rock star whose name I don't think for a second is mentioned in the movie but goes to show how perfectly they got the look, the voice and the style of a young Bob Dylan, is fun to watch.
I don't think they could've picked a better actress to play Edie Sedgwick, Sienna Miller looked exactly like her in the film and also did a wonderful job portraying Sedgwick.
The problem might be that the movie tries to make a short summary from Edies adolescence till death - we don't have time to actually see what's happening.The actor Sienna Miller playing Edie i think does a good job - she is the Moviestar and the Ex-Moviestar/drug-addict when she's supposed to.Guy Pierce plays the role as Andy Warhol.
The film tells the story of Edie Sedgwick (Sienna Miller) who rose to fame with Andy Warhol (Guy Pearce) and, in this film at least, had a passionate affair with Bob Dylan (Hayden Christensen).
Oh, wow...Factory Girl centers on East Coast socialite Edie Sedgwick (Sienna Miller), who in the '60s was considered Andy Warhol's muse, was linked romantically to Bob Dylan, and eventually died of a drug overdose at 28.