... such as what happened to the Bouvier/Beale money that bought the 28 room mansion that mother and daughter live in and is in disrepair? I know that Big Edie was divorced in 1931, and it sounded like "little Edie" had the advantages of an expensive education through college, which would have been right before WWII. What changed? There is no narration here, nor do the documentary makers ask questions. They just let the cameras roll and record whatever happens. Big Edie is in her late 70s yet retains a kind of beauty. However, she talks over little Edie whenever they are in the same room, making it difficult to understand either woman.

What is clear visually is that they are both living in squalor. A cat defecates behind a very old portrait of Big Edie and both Edies laugh about being glad somebody gets to do what they want? Nobody tries to clean it up. Big Edie spends her time on a filthy mattress with stuff she might need stacked on top, yet seems to have no trouble with mobility. They make food for the cameramen including pate on crackers that looks like cat food on crackers. I would want a tetanus shot first.

Little Edie has a mountain of regret. She talks about how she wanted to be a dancer, how somebody wanted to marry her but her mother drove him away, and how she has been taking care of her mother due to her health on and off since the second world war. She mentions how much she hates the country and misses the noise of the city. Little Edie is remarkably well preserved. When this film was made she was 56 but she could pass for forty. She color coordinates all of her wardrobes including her scarves and headdresses that hide her alopecia, yet she won't mop the floor. Shades of faded feelings of being aristocracy perhaps?

Another question I had that went unanswered was where were big Edie's sons? Both lived into the 1990's, yet they are nowhere to be found. Maybe they had the sense to get out of Dodge.

Why are these recluses the subject of a documentary in the first place? Because big and little Edie are Jackie Kennedy Onnasis' aunt and cousin, respectively, and because Suffolk County was trying to evict them based on the condition of the house and grounds - there was no running water at one point - until Jackie supplied the funds to get the estate up to snuff.

Don't look for lots of answers here, because there are really none. It is just a fascinating portrait of two recluses who have slipped into their own form of normality although it looks horrifying to outsiders.

This documentary follows the lives of Big and Little Edie Beale, a mother and daughter, who lived as recluses in their family mansion in East Hampton, NY from the mid-50s through the late 70s. By the time the filmmakers find them, the mansion is falling apart, and the women, one 78 and the other 56, share a squalid room. The older Edie Beale is the aunt of Jackie Kennedy Onassis and the younger is her first cousin. The women were originally going to be evicted from the house due to its decrepit condition, but Jackie sent them money for repairs so they could keep living there.

At times this movie can seem exploitative, as neither woman seems in the best of mental health, but at other times, the movie is hard to look away from. "Little" Edie blames her mother for her current state, and her mother fires back that Edie was never going to be the success she thought she was. "Little" Edie often seems trapped in the past, focused on choices she made decades ago, and loves showing off pictures from her youth, where she clearly was a beautiful debutante. Her mother seems more resigned to her fate, to live out the rest of her life in terrible conditions. There are definite hints of the glamorous life both women once lead, from the pictures that show a happy family, to the grand portrait of the older Edie next to her bed. From what we see of the house, most of the rooms in it are empty, the walls are cracking and falling apart, and "Little" Edie leaves food in the attic for the racoons to feast on. And of course there are numerous cats running around.

At its heart, this documentary is incredibly sad. While neither woman seems particularly depressed by their lot in life, the squalor they live in is utterly awful. It's not particularly clear if there is even running water in the house, and you get the impression that they have essentially been abandoned by their family.

However, as a documentary, the film is a wonder to behold, and is highly recommended.

If you or I lived in a creaking house-of-horror with utilities cut-off and raccoons in the kitchen, we'd be jailed in short order. But if you're Jackie Kennedy's aunt, the rules don't apply. That is the appeal of this film, the bohemian snob-life - too good to be correct.

Grey Gardens had been an elegant mansion of East Hampton when the aunt (Edith Beale) first lived there in 1924, but it had been slowly collapsing all around her, as she divorced her husband and then invited her unmarried daughter (Little Edie) to live with her, mostly grumbling and bickering along the way, if we are to believe this documentary. And no, they were not moving out, whatever the local hygiene department said.

The producers have tried to turn it into a pantomime, and the two ladies seem happy to play up to it. Both had clearly been glamorous in their day, Little E. making sure you notice an impressive pair of pins at fifty-six, and even her mother still showing signs of good bone structure. (Plenty of lingering close-ups of early portraits serve to ram the point home further.)

But the daughter had lost her hair early-on, possibly by setting it on fire, though she claims it was alopecia, sentencing her to a lifetime in headscarves. In any case, her brand of prettiness did not mature comfortably, and she remained a visibly dissatisfied woman. Empty face. Empty life.

The time-warp aspect is deliberately dramatised, with a lot of old records (78 rpm) brought out from their sleeves, 'Tea for Two' being an over-obvious code for nostalgic listening, and the pair of them performing their own dreadful renderings of Cole Porter and Rodgers & Hammerstein.

How they stood twenty-five years of this is beyond me. I found ninety minutes of it quite enough.