DVD review: 'Grey Gardens'

Well what happens when the socialite lights fade to a dim shade of grey?
They make a movie...

'Grey Gardens' was, and still is, one of a kind. This documentary film about estranged relatives of Jackie O's living in a dilapidated mansion in South Hampton, was beyond it's years in 1975. From the moment it starts to it's glorious end, you are drawn into the life of Big & Little Edie...

Little Edie and her amazing technicolour 'costumes' and headscarfs of Pucci Print to Terry Cloth, with that amazing eastcoast-Kennedy-come-Brooklynese clan accent is quite grotesque and charming all at the same time...Big Edie (the mother) tends to sit in states of undressed to overdressed (like the scene with her in the bed with lace, jackets, glasses and an old summer hat) while singing 'Tea for Two' in what can only be described as a warbling voice best left in 1934...

But its the snippet of their crazy life they lead which is starring role in this film...which is both sad and funny...from watching them eat pate and butter pecan icecream in their bedroom while cats shit behind a beautiful portrait of Big Edie (The wonderful line here is "At least someone is doing what they want to")

And it is the dialogue - from funny to sad to downright crazy back to funny again...

Little Edie on dresscode...
" this is the best costume for the day..."
Little Edie on the day...
"It's getting bedddddda!"
Little Edie on dresscode again...
"Mother wanted me to wear a Kimono - we had such a fight"
Little Edie on the raid ...
"this is the most atrocious this that has ever happened to anyone in the history of America"
Little Edie on her...
"They didn't realise they were dealing with such a S-T-A-U-N-C-H charac-da"

(So many lines...so many lines I want to share with the world...)

So if you are wanting to see what happens to the other half when the other half grow wild in the Hamptons...or rather what happens to people when they grow wild...get scarf, tie it around your head and watch "Grey Gardens"

It's getting so much bedda...

(4 Choctops out of 5!)

Ps - Little Edie does a dance with the American flag is so funny it leaves John Cleeses walk for dust...