Grey Gardens (2009)

hyped garbage

A Disappointing Continuation

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

In 1973, brothers Albert Maysles (Arye Gross) and David Maysles (Louis Ferreira) arrive in East Hampton, NY to do a documentary about mother and daughter Edith 'Big Edie' Ewing Bouvier Beale (Jessica Lange) and Edith 'Little Edie' Bouvier Beale (Drew Barrymore) living in the rundown Grey Gardens estate. Little Edie's famous cousin Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Jeanne Tripplehorn) used to visit during the summer. In flashbacks starting in 1936, Little Edie simply wants to be a famous dancer. Big Edie wants her to find a husband with a long leash. Her father Phelan Beale (Ken Howard) wants someone to take care of her. Instead, she's in New York sleeping with married Julius 'Cap' Krug (Daniel Baldwin). Phelan leaves Big Edie. Little Edie starts losing her hair and gets pulled back home by Big Edie. When Phelan dies, Big Edie refuses to sell Grey Gardens with only a small trust that can't maintain the estate.The acting is excellent. Lange is never wrong and Barrymore does a nice job in her older role. The women's story in their earlier days is not quite dramatic enough. It is their older selves where their compelling characters become truly dramatic. The years of disappointments and their old wounds make them great characters. Their scenes with Jackie is terrific. Their relationship is built on years of unfulfilled wishes and faded glory.

Drew Barrymore gives the performance of her career as the alternatingly tragic and euphoric figure of Little Edie. On the one hand, it is a horror story - essentially this vibrant young woman decides to hide herself away, as forever a child living with her half-demented mother, in a fantasy world. On the the other hand, mother and daughter do have a kind of wonderful rapport; they do create their own eccentric world, and make their own life, regardless of what others might think. I've seen the documentary and both actors capture the spirit of their characters. Instead of playing them crazy or trying to imitate the documentary, they depict the stubbornness, the determination not to care what others think, and the dignity they still cling to. Barrymore, with the head scarves, poses and quips, nails the Little Edie character, and Jessica Lange as Big Edie is a quietly dominating force, but not in a malevolent way.

An American tragedy if there ever was one: A story of two fallen women, mother and daughter. This film is best appreciated along with the original documentary of same name, done in 1975. In the 2009 film, Lange and Barrymore are both outstanding. Drew deserved her Golden Globe with her best performance. She captures the look and emotional immaturity of "Little Edie." The one thing she didn't capture was the flashes of Edie's brilliant mind. As young women, both mother and daughter were stunning beauties, but they fancied themselves as singers and dancers, which neither were. Little Edie, if she had a true talent, would probably have been in poetry, her brother was an excellent writer-only her untreated mental illness held her back. In a nutshell, these two women were used to having servants and having everything done for them, and who had the rug pulled out from under them by Big Edie's separation and their following lack of money. A reversal of fortune. As time passed, Mother Beale became lonely and she was dominating by nature, while her daughter was gentle and sweet, mentally ill, and had no other place to go. They kept each other company for 20 years, and without servants, they simply stopped doing anything. They never took out the garbage or cleaned, and were surrounded by cats and even fed the critters in the attic. They simply entertained each other as if they both were still in high society, reliving their past glories and current resentments. The Beale women were like modern day Magnificent Ambersons or Blanche Dubois's, holding onto their past gentility while being unable to see for themselves what they had become. A Fascinating story showing the fine line between success and failure, and the difference between talent and ambition. These ladies sought their life's fulfillment in places in which they had no talent. Little Edie was brilliant and artistic; she just wasn't an actress or dancer.

****possible spoiler***** It's a real challenge to make a movie about a mother and daughter both equally quasi-demented, deluded, and self-absorbed that holds our interest and makes us care about them. And this flick doesn't meet the challenge. I remember a critic saying once that the truest test of film-making is to make us care about the characters. After watching the insufferable antics of these two highly unlikable women for about forty-five minutes I reached the "why do I care" stage. I was strongly tempted to press the "stop", button, something I have done for a very limited list of truly awful movies, but by then the "train wreck" syndrome had set in; i.e. you know, it's a horrible situation but still you can't take your eyes away and you want to see how bad the damage is. I have not seen the original "Grey Gardens" documentary done by the Maysles brothers, but it is difficult to avoid thinking of them as two vultures, for salaciously poking into the lives of two women who, like so many others with less famous connections, have fallen into decrepitude, squalor and semi-insanity. If these women had not been related to Jacqueline Kennedy, would the original documentary have been made? But I digress. I did watch all the way to the end and the final "reconciliation" scene was to me neither moving nor convincing. Fuggedaboutit.