In a world where most of us compete to be noticed, Benedetta Barzini wants to disappear. But before the former model, slash journalist, slash women’s rights activist goes quietly into that horizon rowing her wooden boat, or climbing through the woods backpack in tow, her son Beniamino Barrese wants to film her for all to see. And to remember her always. Or, as he says off camera at the start of his stunning documentary ‘The Disappearance of My Mother’ — “I was not ready to let her go.”
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Little Edie and Peter Beard in a still from 'That Summer'
Göran Hugo Olsson's 'That Summer' shows us how to fall in love at Grey Gardens
Grey Gardens. We’ve heard of the Maysles documentary, we’ve watched the TV fiction film starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange, we may even have attended the Broadway musical about them. Lets face it, those Beales girls are American icons. The grand royalty of dysfunctional mother/daughter relationships yet touched by elegance and undeniable status.
But all through the narrative, Big Edie and Little Edie have somehow been made campy and unreal. Yes the original 'Grey Gardens' is a documentary, but I've never felt the true connection with its characters, even though their story shared so much of my own American history, in both time, events and place.
Now, Göran Hugo Olsson, one of my personal favorite filmmakers and an all around cool human being, has made a new film about Grey Gardens. It is new, in the sense that it will be released in the US this week, yet Olsson's 'That Summer' uses the oldest footage available of the Beales, the original film made by Andy Warhol and Peter Beard and in the process, shows us how to fall in love. Because at the center of 'That Summer' there exists a love story between the filmmaker and his muse Lee Ratziwill, a tale of summer romance with a twist bound by the grand illusion of an ambiance -- that magical moment in time when friends, location and a certain scent in the air creates the impression that everything is possible.
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PHOTO BY LORENZO PIERMATTEI
Trine Dyrholm in Susanna Nicchiarelli’s ‘Nico 1988’
Talking ‘Nico 1988’ with Susanna Nicchiarelli and Trine Dyrholm
From a haunting first image of Christa Päffgen portrayed as a child watching Berlin burn in the distance with her mother at the end of the Second World War, to the core of her film ‘Nico 1988’ which concentrates on the last three years of the rockstar’s life, filmmaker Susanna Nicchiarelli keeps us, her audience, spellbound. ‘Nico 1988’ opened the Orizzonti section of this year’s Venice Film Festival and for me, the event started then and there, with this touching, moving, electrifying yet perfectly human masterpiece.
The life of Nico went from teenage model to Velvet Underground singer and Andy Warhol muse, to, as the artist himself famously stated, becoming “a fat junkie” and disappearing — all in the blink of an eye. Yet when the world wanted her to go away, as they do with pretty women once they turn, eh hum... older, say thirty, Nico found her second wind. She dyed her hair, started wearing head to toe black and became the original mistress of darkness, crooning songs about her existence that still send shivers down every woman’s spine, they are so true to life!
The film screens the weekend of April 26th in NYC, as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. Book tickets on the TFF website.
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