Edie Sedgwick was the late sixties’ version of Marilyn Monroe, a woman who inspired the two most potent—if diametrically opposed—artistic talents of the counterculture: Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan. The old-money party girl made her life into a piece of performance art, defining “it” style for an entire generation of women. But her star burned too brightly and, just over a year after becoming a mainstay at Warhol’s Factory, Sedgwick was a puddle of barbiturates and self-loathing, abandoned by all the men she had loved. Since her death in 1971, friends, fans and commentators have debated the qualities that made Sedgwick so fascinating and self-destructive. George Hickenlooper’s Factory Girl endeavours to explore these very same questions. And while it does an excellent job of visually evoking the era, Hickenlooper’s film—a deadly combination of juvenile psychoanalysis and irresponsible fictionalization—never successfully conveys what made Sedgwick such a magnetic and complex personality.

Hickenlooper frames the film with scenes of an older, greyer Edie (Sienna Miller) in the psychiatric ward of Cottage Hospital, speaking to a film crew just before her death. This device casts a spectre of tragedy over the scenes depicting her early days in New York; Hickenlooper’s version of Warhol’s world is beset with illusory evils. In the director’s hands, the Factory and its motley dramatis personae come alive, but the flash and allure of the place is portrayed as empty and soulless. Guy Pearce does a remarkable job of evoking Warhol’s quirks and detachment, but Simon Monjack’s script makes him come across as a caricatured queen one moment, a cold-blooded shark the next.

Warhol’s foil is the earthy, truth-speakin’ Billy Quinn (Hayden Christensen), an Aryan catalogue-model stand-in for Bob Dylan. (Dylan’s lawyers have threatened to sue Factory Girl’s producers; Sedgwick’s brother claims she aborted the singer’s child after an extended affair, Dylan denies everything.) In Monjack’s script, Quinn seeks Sedgwick out and initiates an intense affair, attempting to convince her that Warhol’s philosophy is empty and misguided. As the two men battle for her soul, Sedgwick refuses to choose, ultimately ensuring that both of the controlling men will reject her.

Sienna Miller does an admirable job of playing the fear-stricken, arrested adolescent who can’t live without the security of dominant male figures. Her descent into drug-induced misery is as absorbing as the most horrific car wreck. But because the screenwriters and director fail to adequately demonstrate what drew Sedgwick to Warhol and vice versa, Sedgwick’s meltdown lacks any significant pathos.

Factory Girl won’t teach the uninitiated a thing about who Edie Sedgwick was, or why anyone cares about her today. Ultimately, Hickenlooper’s film is emptier than the world it critiques.