I Shot Andy Warhol

For a film which depicts the machinations of one of the twentieth century's most vibrant artistic groups - Andy Warhol's Factory in the late 60s - Mary Harron's I Shot Andy Warhol, a biopic of peripheral Factory member and would-be Warhol assassin Valerie Solanas, is surprisingly torpid. Lili Taylor portrays apocalyptic feminist Solanas with a gutsy intelligence, but the rest of the cast, cluttered with such second generation virtual stars as Tahnee (daughter of Raquel) Welch and Donovan (son of Donovan) Leitch, seem to serve no real purpose except to look glamorous draped over the silver Factory furniture. Another second generationer, Jared (son of Richard) Harris, puts in a convincing performance as Warhol, but his lines are kept to a minimum and, bizarrely, his character out of the spotlight.

The film follows the development of Solanas from her college years up to her fifteen minutes of fame when she shot and nearly killed Warhol. Solanas's life as a struggling writer and an opportunist, selling either her body or her conversation depending on consumer demand, and her subsequent spiral into paranoia is intercut with excerpts from her radical feminist S.C.U.M. (The Society for Cutting up Men) Manifesto.

There are some imaginative touches. Sequences of frenzied cutting demonstrating the state of Solanas's mind and the evocative soundtrack both demonstrate flair but fail to animate the film. Ultimately I Shot Andy Warhol is neither serious study nor successful entertainment, and sits uneasily between the two. One interminable party sequence has you longing for some of the drugs being touted round on screen. Now that might have livened things up.

Reviewed by Monika Maurer

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