I found Grey Garden's to be a gripping film, an amazingly intimatelook at too eccentrics who basically have the right idea: forgetsociety and live in a delapidated house with no heating and a hugebrood of cats and raccoons, persuing their own interests rathermundainly, all the while chattering at the camera.Big Edie and Little Edie are the two crazies that the Mazles Bros.have chosen to document. They seem like characters out of aFellini film, only stranger, if that makes any sense. Old Edie isalmost fully bedridden, a pile of papers, clothes and dirty dishesgrowing around her. Little Edie is even more interesting. Sheprances around the house, always wearing a baboushka-likeheaddress around her head, completely covering her hair. Wenever see her hair throughout the film, nor do we ever get a hintthat she still has much. At age fifty eight, though, she is stillbeautiful and full of life.In Grey Gardens, we get the sense that both of these women'slives have become much less than what they once were. LittleEdie is probably the sadder of the two. While her mother, in herearlier years, got married, made a family, lived luxuriously andeven made some recordings (the scene where, at 77, she singsalong with a recording of "Tea for Two" she made decades ago isone of the films best scenes), Edie left her promicing career as amodel to take care of her ailing mother. At 58, she still longed tofind her prince charming. If anything Little Edie is still a little girl,full of dreams of glamour and fame, and of domestic and romanticbliss, that have yet to be fulfilled.Highlights of the film include the opening moments, where LittleEdie explains her outfit to the camera, the "tea for two" sequence,the birthday party, the climactic argument, the grocery deliverscene, and the scene in the attic. The whole thing is incrediblycandid and unpretencious. And it's made all the more remarcablesince it's all real.I suggest seeing Grey Gardens back-to-back with the KennethAnger short Puce Moment. The Criterion DVD is $35.00, but it'sworth every penny.
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