Retrospective: 30/10/06 - Wellington Film Society screening of Grey Gardens at the Paramount Theatre.

'The unbelievable but true story of Mrs Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, recluses who live in the decaying 28-room East Hampton mansion known as Grey Gardens, a place so derelict that the local authorities once threatened to evict them for violating building and sanitation codes.' (Chicago International Documentary Festival).

Neighbours back in Bristol had recommended this movie to me so when I saw the screening advertised I wrote it in my diary in pen. The film was shown at the Paramount Theatre by the Wellington Film Society. The theatre seemed vast compared to the smaller arthouses and multiplex screens I've become accustomed to. The audience wore black and I left the film feeling unbearably sad but it took me the bus ride home to work it out... **SPOILER ALERT** ...throughout the film Little Edie wears a kind of improvised turban which she is constantly adjusting. You never see Little Edie without it and if I recall correctly no explanation is given for her wearing it other than one reference she makes to her hair growing back. Then in the closing seconds of the film, as her (gin-soaked?) mother sleeps, a lone Little Edie dances seductively in time to the songs of her yesteryears. Perhaps unbeknown to her we watch through the bars of the banister; a child's-spy view of an adult's private party. In the moment before the film cuts to black you realise that this particular turban is made from a transparent guaze - and you can see through it! I found this final reveal shocking but it wasn't until I got off the bus in Hataitai that I figured out why. Throughout the film mother and daughter are exposed, their celebrity and eccentricities laid bare, and the makers Albert & David Maysles - the brothers who were also behind Gimme Shelter, the chilling account of the Stones '69 Altamont Speedway concert - are open to accusations of exploitation. But the film's moving account of the complex and contridictory relationship between mother and daughter - 'the regrets and recriminations' - means that this is more than just a freakshow. I did not get a sense that the filmakers meant to cause hurt to their subjects. So why, considering the pains Little Edie takes throughout to ensure that her turban is in situ - assuming that while she welcomes these filmakers into her life she clearly doesn't want to be seen without her head scarf - could the Maysles not have saved her from this final indignity - left her this last vestige of privacy. Maybe as someone who in recent years has come to embrace any opportunity to wear any kind of head gear I sympathised with Little Edie. Maybe, and this has occured to me only as I've been sat here writing this, I merely imagined I could see through that final scarf and the power of sugestion did the rest. Further reflection that night was hampered by the house full of housemates who greeted my return. Subsequently whenever I try to replay that final scene in my head I find that the soundtrack of bygone gramophone has been replaced by The Cult song 'Edie' and that waltzing Little Edie morphs back and forth between herself and Ian Astbury wearing the purple bandanna he sports in the 'She Sells Sanctury' video. Help! Think I'll take to my bed with a tub of ice-cream and an improvised spoon x