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copyright ©1999-2003
DigsMagazine.com.
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Plot synopsis
Grey
Gardens is the true story of elderly, peculiar Edith Bouvier Beale
and her wacky, fashion-challenged (or –inspired, depending upon how
you look at it), middle-aged daughter, who happens to share the same
name. Big Edie and Little Edie, as they’re generally referred to by
friends and family, enjoy a certain amount of fame thanks to their
relationship (aunt and cousin) to Jackie O, but it’s the decrepit
state of the once grand East Hampton estate, Grey Gardens, that both
women call home that’s earned them local infamy. Surrounded by
multi-gazillion-dollar mansions on one of the most exclusive strips of
shore in America, the Beales live in downright squalor in a gargantuan
28-room house that’s so far past its prime that local authorities have
deemed it a health hazard, inflicting a series of raids upon the house
in an attempt to get its inhabitants to shape up or move out. The walls
are crumbling, the paint faded and peeled, the wood floors rotting and
covered in litter –- not to mention the fact that the house is
completely over-run by raccoons, stray cats and the accompanying smells
and pests (fleas galore) that go hand-in-hand with wild animals. But for
Big Edie, it’s her beloved home, the one place in the world where she
was always happy as a young woman, free to entertain the bohemian
friends her upper-crust husband and family never approved of, and to
sing to her heart’s content. Little Edie’s own relationship to Grey
Gardens is a bit more complicated – as a beautiful young
thirty-something model and wannabe actress/dancer living in New York
City, she was summoned to Grey Gardens decades ago to care for her
ailing mother, and has felt stuck there ever since. As mother and
daughter trade clever quips and barbs, we learn more about the glamorous
days of their youths, and get a peek into one of the most devoted,
dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships ever captured on film.
Review
My
boy and I are both suckers for documentaries about the amusing
eccentricities of real-life people, and stumbled upon Grey Gardens
quite by accident in the new releases section of my fabulous local
video shop. It was only afterwards, when we went through the DVD’s extras,
that we learned that the film is a cult classic of sorts, beloved by
many (particularly those in the fashion design industry, for whom Little
Edie has become a veritable fashion icon). What’s amazing to me is to
realize that so many people out there saw the same film I did, and still
ended up admiring the Beales. Where I saw a crazy, manipulative,
controlling mother and her loony, dependent daughter, others fell in
love with two brazen oddballs, firmly committed to marching to the beats
of their own different drummers, outside world be damned. True, both
Edies, like the big estate they call home, have a bigger-than-life
beauty that shines through the shambles: like an ancient ruin, their
loveliness lies largely in the reminder of how astonishingly grand and
gorgeous they were way back when, and their stubborn refusal to let the
rest of the world tell them they’re any less fabulous now, despite the
shabbiness brought on by age and possible mental imbalance. There’s
also no denying that though the Beales may lack sense, they have wit to
spare: Grey Gardens is chock-full of eminently quotable quips
that the Edies seem to toss off effortlessly. Still, while I’m all for
individuality, there’s a difference between being a little quirky, and
having serious mental issues. And when I see a 53-year-old woman whining
to her mother like a 10-year-old, or an 80-year-old woman gleefully
letting one of her many stray cats pee in her pig-sty of a room –
again -- it just makes me sad. Fortunately,
I don’t have to want to be buddies with the people in a movie to find
their story compelling, and cinéma vérité pioneers Albert and David Maysles document the
Edies beautifully, not judging their subjects in the least. Regardless of how you feel about the Edies after catching a
glimpse into their world, there’s no denying that their lives make for
fascinating film fodder indeed.
—reviewed
by Yee-Fan Sun
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