This could be about no one but Valerie Solanas, the militant lesbian, founder of the one-member Society for Cutting Up Men (S.C.U.M.) and author of its "manifesto," would-be playwright, part-time panhandler and streetwalker, full-time chainsmoker, who in 1968 pumped a couple of slugs at point-blank range into the then King of Pop: symbol of male oppression to Solanas alone. The first feature film of British documentarian Mary Harron so diminishes its cast of characters (when it can bother to identify them) that we must wonder why we ought still to be interested in them a quarter of a century later. Lili Taylor is intense and eccentric in the lead role, but then Lili Taylor is intense and eccentric in any role. Jared Harris (son of Richard Harris) fails to penetrate the monosyllabic and noncommittal defense mechanisms of the silver-wigged Warhol. And Stephen Dorff, entering the heated sweepstakes of screen drag queens, does not get below the surface as Warhol "superstar" Candy Darling, but at least gets the surface: "I did my Kim Novak for him, and he was very impressed." Other personages familiar, forgotten, or unheard-of are even less individualized. With Martha Plimpton, Lothaire Bluteau. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
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