Aaron Peasley

DREW BARRYMORE dives headlong into the role of fashion’s most unlikely muse in the remake of cult classic GREY GARDENS. Her inspired portrayal of tragic socialite “LITTLE EDIE” BEALE shows an actor at the top of her game. Aaron Peasley on the part that Ms Barrymore truly makes her own.

In 1975 documentary-maker brothers Albert and David Maysles released a film called Grey Gardens depicting the lives of Edith “Big Edie” Bouvier Beale and her daughter, “Little Edie”, the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. In the film, the oddball duo had fallen from the top of the Social Register into a state of spectacular yet oddly mirthful decay, together with their once glorious East Hampton home, Grey Gardens.

The film, by turns hilarious, touching and downright mortifying, offers an irresistible riches-to-rags tale set against the backdrop of the Beales’ squalid mansion, complete with its impenetrable, overgrown grounds.

Grey Gardens features a supporting cast of feral cats and raccoons and includes scenes of the two eccentric Beales eating from tin cans and cooking from a makeshift bedside hotplate in their shared sleeping quarters. Throw in a few spontaneous song and dance numbers, lots of mother-daughter
squabbling and some unforgettable freeform fashion — cardigans as turbans, towels as togas — and you have the ingredients for an enduring cult classic. In the three and a half decades since its release, Grey Gardens has grown into an unlikely American legend, inspiring a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, fashion collections, art exhibits, coffee-table books, Facebook groups and countless drag routines.

The latest project to have sprung from the sensationally camp documentary is a new dramatic movie of the same name, starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore as Big Edie and Little Edie, respectively.
While the Beales’ faded glories echo throughout the Maysles documentary, the new film, directed by Michael Sucsy, takes us back to the pair’s early years. Thoroughly researched flashbacks illuminate the Edies’ lives as far back as the 1930s, and these sequences are interspersed with re-created scenes from the documentary. There’s a moment in the film where Little Edie, captured marvellously by a dazzling Barrymore, says plaintively, “It’s very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present — awfully difficult.”