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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