What a depressing movie. It's good, but depressing...and bad for the gays. The movie is not out to get the gays, I don't think, but whoever watches it can't help but feel that the gays either helped destroy a poor rich little girl or sat and watched and did nothing while the girl destroyed herself.
In Factory Girl, Sienna Miller plays, very well, the role of Edie Sedgwick, a precursor to Paris Hilton who came from big money and wanted to be famous in NY.
Edie suffers quite a bit throughout her childhood, from being committed to a mental institution to being abused by her father; Edie then goes on to suffer some more in the hands of a manipulative Andy Warhol, played, also very well, by Guy Pierce.
The movie is not all bad for the gays. First the good stuff: There's a very sweet scene in which Edie is recounting the story of a very close friend who was gay and was rejected by his family. The gay's family put the little gay in an institution and some time after that the gay commits suicide -- that marks Edie for life because she loved that gay very much. That was very sweet, sweet enough to almost move the movie's rating into a LightShed zone. Also good: the monster of a father Edie has, says to Andy Warhol's face that he is a faggot, and this is over a fancy dinner with lots of people around -- the slur was good here because the movie has us strongly against Edie's father; so, his being a homophobe is no surprise and fits his evil character well. It goes to show that only nasty idiots say that word. Another bad guy who doesn't do much to save poor little Edie is played by Hayden Christensen, who plays a musician (apparently based on Bob Dylan) whom Edie falls for; he tries (but not too hard) to protect Edie from Andy Warhol and utters one or two homophobic remarks at Andy...not nice.
We have those two bits of gay positive content, but in the end, the light for the gays is not good. I left the movie with a feeling that the plot construed Andy as a bad, greedy guy -- there's nothing really wrong there, but (and this is bad) the movie also gives us the idea that the fact that Andy was gay had some effect on his evil deeds.
Factory Girl is a good movie, it's just out on DVD, but watch it at our own peril (did I mention it's depressing? and portrays the gays in a bad light?)
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