The Cinema Girl | Grey Gardens (2009)

DVD REVIEW | Serena Donadoni | The docudrama Grey Gardens fits perfectly into the HBO niche of star-studded biopics, adhering to their careful storytelling formula: A-list talent immerse themselves in imaginative impersonations while juicy morsels about the scandalous lives of the rich and famous are tastefully doled out to premium cable subscribers. Yet Grey Gardens also rises above its origins by commenting on the very nature of fame and adoration — no easy feat in the age of reality television, when celebrity is as fleeting as it is suffocating. By tracing the backstory of Edith Bouvier Beale (Jessica Lange) and her daughter Little Edie (Drew Barrymore), the stranger than fiction subjects of the landmark 1976 documentary by David and Albert Maysles, writer/director Michael Sucsy and screenwriter Patricia Rozema (Mansfield Park) explore the origins of the observed life as performance art, and the embrace of artifice as alternate reality. The bickering eccentrics captured by the Maysles' compassionate gaze are at once horrifying and enchanting, formerly wealthy socialites existing in oddball isolation in the squalid ruins of the Hamptons high life. This Grey Gardens recreates what the Maysles saw, but revels as much in the before as the after, revealing the troubled Beales as the glorious hostess and shining debutante they once were, and watches them slide down the slippery slope of bitter poverty and furious interdependency. Much is made of the Beale women's difficulties adhering to social norms even before the Maysles brothers inadvertently made them into reality stars (if not the first, then certainly two of the most enduring), yet the makers of this probing fiction film carefully skirt any mention of mental illness. They focus instead on the split in perception between how the Edies view themselves (as idiosyncratic yet regal) and how the outside world sees them (as decrepit bag ladies). Although Michael Sucsy and Patricia Rozema don't explicitly make the case, the continuing pop culture fascination with the Beales — including a Broadway musical as well as this biopic — only demonstrates that dereistic thinking has won out in the end. Jessica Lange is more fully realized as the younger Edith (she can't quite master the death rattle rumble of the elderly Big Edie's voice), but her thwarted glamour as the faded queen of Grey Gardens has an amazing poignancy, even when her words are laced with malice. But it's Drew Barrymore who gives a transfiguring, career-making performance like Angelina Jolie's in the HBO biopic Gia. By finally letting her freak flag fly and fully inhabiting Little Edie's mottled skin, she can embody both the possibility and ruination of a thwarted daughter. After shying away from singing in the 1996 musical Everyone Says I Love You, Barrymore now throws caution to the wind, and the result is a real humdinger. Drew's kooky songs and dances aren't just musical mimicry: they're the joyous expression of Edie's irrepressible optimism, bursts of buoyant exuberance powerful enough to keep the ocean of despair at bay.

GREY GARDENS | 2009

Cast: Jessica Lange (Edith "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale), Drew Barrymore (Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale), Ken Howard (Phelan Beale), Malcolm Gets (George "Gould" Strong), Daniel Baldwin (Julius "Cap" Krug), Jeanne Tripplehorn (Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis), Arye Gross (Albert Maysles), Justin Long (David Maysles), and Kenneth Welsh (Max Gordon).

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