Grey Gardens

Named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the top fifty cult movies of all time, and “remade” as both a Tony-winning Broadway musical and an Emmy-winning HBO movie (starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange), this legendary documentary by Albert and David Maysles tells the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story of Mrs. Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, relatives — the aunt and first cousin, respectively — of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Like real-life versions of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, the eccentric pair, known as Big Edie and Little Edie, lived as recluses in a decaying Long Island mansion known as “Grey Gardens.” Their home was in such appalling condition that local authorities once threatened to evict them for violating safety and sanitation codes; the incident made national headlines — American royalty, living in squalor! The film, criticized by some for being voyeuristic, offers an intimate, engrossing and disturbing portrait of the pair and their complex mother-daughter relationship. “A sympathetic but bizarre depiction . . . Some critics accused the Maysles of exploiting the grotesque aspects of the women’s lives in a sensational tabloid manner, but the filmmakers defended their choice of subject as a reflection of real life and their motive as an honest search for truth” (Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia). Colour, Digibeta video. 94 mins.