Grey Gardens (HBO)

Grey Gardens is an HBO film about Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier Beale, an aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.  The Beales came into notoriety in the 1972 documentary by the Maysles brothers.  This fictionalized account of the Beales, with Jessica Lange playing the mother and Drew Barrymore as the daughter, dances back and forth in time from 1936 to 1972, and it is wonderful.  The Beales were high society, and both mother and daughter loved to sing and dance.  Both were eccentric and didn’t quite fit in to the society that surrounded them.  They end up living by themselves in their huge mansion in East Hampton and letting it go to ruin.  I have always been fascinated by them and enjoyed the documentary by the Maysles brothers.  In this film, which uses the framework of the documentary being made, we are drawn deeply into their characters.  As acted with incredible authenticity by Lange and Barrymore, the Beales are unique and tender and tragic and funny.  The chemistry between Lange and Barrymore is very strong and their push and pull relationship as mother and daughter is very believable.  I found myself wanting them to find happiness in whatever form it took.