NEITHER rumours that the sex between Sienna Miller and Hayden Christensen in Factory Girl was for real, nor claims that the unnamed country 'musician' lover played by Christensen was a thinly veiled Bob Dylan, could lure American audiences to this biopic of the late Edie Sedgwick, for a while Andy Warhol's favourite 'superstar' before she died from barbiturate poisoning in 1971.

Yet it surely deserved better than its dismal gross of under $1m.

Sedgwick was a Paris Hilton of the 1960s, a poor little rich girl - a sort of stoned, anorexic Holly Golightly - who briefly found the fame she craved after meeting Warhol, by then celebrated as the father of pop art.

Her hair dyed silver to match his trademark look, Sedgwick featured in several unscripted movies - playing versions of herself - filmed at Warhol's selfstyled Factory, a hangout for rent boys, junkies and underground musicians on East 42nd Street in New York.

Sedgwick is portrayed by Miller as a victim, sexually abused and humiliated by her billionaire father before falling under the hypnotic spell of Warhol (played by Guy Pearce). He manipulated her to suit his ends, or so we're told, and then callously shut her out when she became a nuisance, as did her musician boyfriend (Hayden Christensen).

If Sedgwick hadn't grown up rich and pampered, she might have been just another mentally unstable drug addict nobody could remember. Because of Warhol, she became an early prototype for today's cult of the celebrity - famous just for being famous.

"Everyone, " as Warhol predicted, "can be famous for 15 minutes."

Factory Girl, cutting back and forth from a session between Sedgwick and her therapist in 1970, shortly before her death, and recreating scenes from Warhol's movies, alternates colour with black-and-white to evoke a period documentary feel. Miller brings an uninhibited sexuality to her role, but not much more. Guy Pearce beautifully catches the cold-fish detachment of Warhol, impervious to her pain or indeed to any emotion, a trait that made him the breakthrough artist he was, using the camera simply to record whatever was placed before it without comment or editing, a forerunner perhaps of today's reality television.

Back then this was seen as dangerously provocative and subversive, particularly in Ireland with its medieval church-driven censorship. When the Guinness Film Society screened Warhol's gay western Lonesome Cowboys, the garda� tried to close them down and put me briefly under surveillance for refusing to make a statement confirming that it had been screened: apparently they hoped to use my glowing review and praise for what Warhol was attempting as evidence against them.

Perhaps for that reason Factory Girl has a certain nostalgic appeal to me, although Lou Reed, a member of the Velvet Underground and buddy of both Warhol and Sedgwick, has denounced it as "one of the most disgusting, foul things I've seen by any illiterate retard in a long time". If it provokes such an intemperate reaction it can't be that tame.