Review of The Beales of Grey Gardens (2006) by Jean-Francois V — 25 Sep 2008

If you have already seen "Grey Gardens", this film is just more of the same material. Neither a sequel nor a.

Prequel, it is another feature length film put together with outtakes from the early 1970s.

Some of the new scenes might seem a little bit redundant: there is of course more footage of Little Edie singing, swimming, sunbathing, feeding raccoons,.

Eating ice-cream, flirting with the Maysles and performing her improvised cabaret dancing. But you also get to hear her philosophising about other issues, you.

See more of the fast proliferating cats, and you learn more about her and Big Edie's religious background: how by the age of 28 the latter had been "educated out of her religion" by her husband (who "didn't approve of [her] going to confession after [she] was married"), while Little Edie "had to get it on [her] own fight for it" and kept going to church.

I was occasionally uncomfortable about the Maysles' attitude towards Little Edie. I felt they were sometimes trying to prod her into saying something silly the way French journalists prod Jean-Claude Van.

Damme (who never disappoints.) But despite her disastrous artistic tastes (the film tells you where the horrible New Age paintings on the walls come from) and her self-confessed weakness for astrology ("I went back to the Catholic Church, I shouldn't even be talking about astrology"), I never found what she had.

To say that ridiculous, though she was obviously clueless about many things.

The film almost ends on the revelation that Big Edie likes her daughter to change clothes about ten times a.

Day (even though they must have stopped buying clothes more than twenty years earlier.) This is followed by a montage of Little Edie "modeling" her thirty-year old wardrobe - mostly bathing suits - to Kern and Hammerstein's "I Dream Too Much", which was a bit condescending and disrespectful.

I wonder how much influence these two movies have had on modern culture. In particular, I'd be curious to know whether the Beales influenced the characters of Lily and Vivian in "Pushing Daisies". As for the upcoming "Grey Gardens" movie with Jessica Lange and.

Drew Barrymore, I hope it gives some order to the background story which the viewer of the two Maysles films is forced to piece together by himself.