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April 17, 2009

Review - HBO's Grey Gardens

Grey Gardens, the feature film on HBO that premieres this weekend, is a mixed bag. Jessica Lange is perfection. Drew Barrymore does some of her best work ever in a dramatic role that hooks into her personal flamboyance and sadness.

But the film, which lays heavily on the making of and repeated recreations of the documentary by The Maysles, feels a bit like Cliff Notes on the rest of their lives. Is the true narrative not that interesting? Or were the writers trying so hard to allow for emotional ambiguity that they never found a strong storyline? I don’t really know. I did see the musical Grey Gardens, which covers a lot of the same ground, but is, in fact, a musical and works decisively in the light or in the dark.

The big question that comes out of the experience of the documentary is, “How did these women get here?” And the doc doesn’t make any effort to answer that question, though some of the film’s great moments are seeing the sense of loss in the eyes of both characters, some things expressed in an oblique way in comments.

The answer, I have learned in the next two incarnations of the tale, is, simplistically, that the mother (Big Edie) had a bad combination of being both co-dependent and delusional in thinking she was truly independent, all in a period where women’s work in wealthy society was marriage and kids. The daughter (Little Edie) shared her mother’s ambition about being independent as well as suffering a serious co-dependence issue. This schizo thinking led to a bad marriage – and an eventual divorce - for Big Edie and no marriage at all for Little Edie.

Dramatically, this is a tough nut to crack, as both women get in their own way and mostly have themselves to blame for their plight. The reason it is so compelling in the doc is that we are watching the results and like reading a novel, we fill in those blanks for ourselves, while at the same time being overwhelmed by what is in front of us. In the musical, it leaps from bright and shiny to the dregs of these lives. The HBO film aspires to filling in some of that middle… and it may be an impossible task.

Simply, there is about 20 missing years of deterioration and whether by design or because there is no better answer, it is missing in this film as it is in the doc and musical, but somehow, because the film is a straight drama, you feel the hole as an audience.

And while I hate to tell a filmmaker what I would have liked him or her to do, I wonder whether there was a better answer in a more raw portrayal? Both the doc and the musical address the idea of sexual jealousy between mother and daughter. Not so much this film. What the film does offer that the other versions do not is an actual affair for Little Edie. Yet, the film doesn’t really dig into its raw power, just the idea that Edie gets hurt by a married man acting like a married man.

What I wanted to know, to be frank, is whether Little Edie, who cock teases the boys in another scene, likes sex. Does she see it as a means to an end? Is it something she truly experiences with passion?

I guess that issue circles around the bigger issue for the film… what are these women passionate about? Anything? Nothing? Are they dead of heart… dead of loins? If so, why? Is it really just as simple as confusion and missed opportunity?

I really hoped for more from this film… and got less than in either other incarnation. Though again, two very strong performances, especially from Ms. Lange, whose absence from the big screen is a real shame. (I felt that way after seeing Dustin Hoffman on screen last year, too. Tootsie 2 is a bad idea… but that reunion of two great actors with two very different styles as mature adults… I would pay to see that.)

If you see the film and it is your first exposure to the tale, you should be pleased and titillated. And then, you should go to Criterion’s website and buy the documentary. Then, in September, you can watch Lange get her Emmy and Drew enjoy having been nominated.

Posted by dpoland at April 17, 2009 01:26 PM

Comments

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