Engaging only a scant outline of the life of Sedgwick (Miller) and relying on foolish caricatures of her famous friends and acquaintances, the film works backward from a fictional therapy session shortly before her overdose death in 1971 at age 28. The film's Citizen Kane-in-a-can format allows for flashbacks to familiar points in the Edie canon, including dull restagings of the filming of a couple of her movies for Warhol (Pearce), as well as highly conjectural sequences concerning her abusive childhood and, most egregiously, an affair with Bob Dylan. (Though never identified by name due to legal threats from Dylan prior to Factory Girl's proposed release last year, Christensen's "Billy Quinn" is plainly a dopey facsimile of our Zimmy.)
Hickenlooper, best known for elevating LA DJ and scenester Rodney Bingenheimer to new levels of quasi-fame in 2003's Mayor of the Sunset Strip, directs with little enthusiasm for or understanding of the Factory milieu, while cinematographer Michael Grady's work is prosaic throughout (it doesn't help that Shreveport, Louisiana, doubles for Manhattan in much of the film). Coupled with the simplistic screenplay by "Captain Mauzner" (Josh Klausner), the result is a visually indifferent, overly literal interpretation that glosses over Warhol's antic creativity and Sedgwick's ethereal charisma in favor of a forced, absurdly Manichaean battle for her soul waged by the Dylan stand-in and "no-talent freak" Andy.
Hollywood has positioned Warhol as a kind of countercultural Liberace since at least 1996, when Mary Harron's I Shot Andy Warhol and Julian Schnabel's Basquiat floated a largely believable Jared Harris and an overtly burlesque David Bowie, respectively, as Pittsburgh's most famous son. Those portrayals were the essence of nuance compared to the bizarre impersonation perpetrated here; pancaked and prostheticized to within an inch of his life, Pearce's Warhol appears scarcely human and behaves accordingly. Condemning the artist's dodgy interpersonal skills and predilection for slapdash social climbing is one thing, but characterizing him as a soulless near-zombie undercuts every bit of shading attempted by the gamely struggling Pearce. Fallon's indistinct take on Edie guru Chuck Wein is nearly as bad, while Christensen is given free reign to thoroughly embarrass himself, particularly in a gauzy, Lifetime Television-esque lovemaking scene with Miller. As for Miller herself, she turns in a versatile performance that's responsible for the few good things that can be said of the film, although Edie's every emotion is laid so bare that it leaves little room for the actress to surprise or beguile—skills the genuine article was capable of achieving with virtually no effort.
Edie Sedgwick's life was undeniably tragic, but in ways that were sadder, more complicated and less conducive to sanctification that anything in Factory Girl. No matter—Hickenlooper and company are all too happy to plop their heroine in a pat victimization scenario and heavy-handedly vilify virtually everyone else for the sake of cheap titillation. Thus they succeed only in doing Edie yet another injustice.