Factory Girl.

So far, Factory Girl sounds like a disappointment across the board, but it has given the Los Angeles Times a refreshing idea: get critics from departments other than film to write up a three-part package.

Music: In a piece the under-appreciated role of the women at the sides of the rock and pop stars in "the decade before feminism's second wave took hold," Ann Powers argues that the film gets the "mutual exploitation" aspect of Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick's partnership right, "but ultimately it posits Sedgwick as an innocent victim, downplaying the drive and artistry she exhibited through her public partnership with the man who 'created' her."

Updated through 1/9.

Art: For Christopher Knight, Warhol's Before and After [PDF] explains the dynamic behind Warhol's brief but intense working relationship with Sedgwick, his resplendent Superstar, which lasted less than a year. Think of it as a covert double portrait. Andy was 'Before,' Edie was 'After.'... Factory Girl is disappointing because it doesn't grasp this fundamental aspect of the Warhol-Sedgwick relationship. Instead, a surprisingly conventional psychosexual drama unfolds."

Fashion: "Today's fashion plates - Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, Factory Girl star Sienna Miller - have free clothes thrown at them by every design house on the planet and stylists to pick out their 'signature' bug-eye sunglasses," notes Booth Moore. "Sedgwick found her own signatures - the leotards and black opaque tights, old fur coats, Breton striped T-shirts and big earrings."

Meantime, Anne Thompson finds that "the problem-plagued movie's not the train wreck that some have cracked it up to be."

Earlier: David Ehrenstein in the LA Weekly.

Update, 1/9: Rhoda Koenig tells Edie's story in the Independent. These are the need-to-know basics.

Posted by cphillips at January 8, 2007 12:11 AM