GREY GARDENS

by Kevin Koehler

Sometimes, I like to think of these musings as I would an algebra class - the correct answer (two thumbs way up!) isn't enough, you have to show your work as well. So much of what counts as popular film criticism is done in an echo chamber of cliché and meaningless surface analysis with little thought to what movies are trying to tell us (perhaps because contemporary cinema too often attempts to say nothing...and succeeds). Just as people like the wrong movies for the wrong reasons, people can like the right movies with similar faulty logic.

An interesting exchange occurred recently when Turner Classic Films host Robert Osborne introduced the network's broadcast premiere of the Maysles Brothers classic, Grey Gardens. Osbourne was interviewing actress Christine Ebersole, who currently stars in a Broadway musical adaptation of the documentary (not a completely terrible idea, it has to be said) when this little tête-à-tête occurs:

Robert Osburne: I think it's a fascinating story for all of us because I think it's, like, the definitive tale of not taking charge of your life. That's what fascinated about Little Edie.

Christine Ebersole: I think it's more complex than that for me because I see it as sort of not conforming. Not being a conformist. And sort of listening to your own drumbeat.

Robert Osborne: (visually uncomfortable) Right, right...

Bless your heart, Robert Osborne. It must have been hard for you, for the sake of politeness and diplomacy, to sit there and allow something so absurd to go uncommented upon. I have never been governed by either of these things, so fire cannons.

Ms. Ebersole is not just wrong, she is very wrong, and very wrong twice. The first time is when she congratulated herself for possessing such a "complex" understanding of Little Edie, when in actuality, deriving empowerment from this character is about as superficial a reading of it as you can get. The second time takes place when the actress extols Little Edie's iconoclastic non-conformist virtues. This is undoubtedly a popular view among those who have made Grey Gardens a cult classic, largely for Little Edie's campy persona and unique ideas about fashion. Like Ms. Ebersole, they are wrong, very wrong, and do the film a great disservice.

Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter (Little) Edie are the black sheep of the New England Bouvier family (best known for its most famous alumni, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis), leading life in relative obscurity until their general uncleanliness and rejection of traditional lawn/home maintenance attracts the attention of local health inspectors (or, as the Beales like to call them, "Republicans"). Blind to their own relative squalor (and the growing family of raccoons living in the attic), Little Edie remarks in one memorable line "they can get you in East Hampton for wearing red shoes on a Thursday."

Much of the film documents the unrelenting back and forth between mother and daughter, circling the reasons behind their exile like an Escher illustration - moving closer yet farther away at the same time. Edith, like her famous niece, managed to marry even richer than she was, only to see her husband leave her for another woman (Little Edie doesn't even consider her mother divorced - "My father got a fake Mexican divorce. But we didn't recognize it). She lives in the past, spending her days singing along to records she herself recorded in her youth and staring at a painted portrait made forty years earlier that stray cats now shit behind. Edith doesn't leave her bed much, cooking her meals from a nearby hot plate.

Given her age and health, Edith's presence here is understandable (though surely still bizarre). Little Edie, the undeniable star of this piece, is entirely more complicated. Quite attractive as a debutante of American aristocracy, she never marries despite a number of proposals...or so she claims. She isn't reliable in her perceptions of past or current realities, particularly in regards to men and their affections. They all want sex (perhaps), and further, sex with her (not any more). Little Edie claims she returned to Grey Gardens to take care of her ailing mother (a fact that Edith refutes, and we believe her). She is often making asides to the camera, expressing a desire to leave this place for the neon lights of New York City. Yet no one is keeping her prisoner - the locks on her door are her own.

Verily, Little Edie (and to a lesser extent, her mother) are obsessed with men. It's a truly pre-feminist mentality (if we take anything away from the film, it is that Grey Gardens is a deconstruction of this outdated mindset) taken to its grotesque extreme. Indeed, they appear to be waiting for a man to save them from these rotting walls and servant-less existence (picking up a broom is beneath them). The Beales truly are the idle rich, except they're not rich anymore and haven't realized it yet. They are convinced, as those with money always are, that the help is stealing from them (in this case, benevolent handyman Jerry) even when there's nothing to steal.

"Not conforming?" "Not being a conformist?" Little Edie is the ultimate conformist, always seeking approval and always performing - for the camera, for her mother, and in the absence of either, one imagines, herself.

Interesting footnote: Little Edie would achieve a dream of sorts when in 1977, after the film's release (and her associated fame), she left Grey Gardens and toured as her own one-woman cabaret show. The act was not particularly well-received by the critics and Edie would eventually move, like most non-conformist New Yorkers, to Florida.

© Pretentious Musings. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.