Film Recommendation

If, like me, you're even vaguely tired of January resets and resolutions and the never-ending chore of decluttering, Grey Gardens is the perfect act of resistance. I watched it again recently and was reminded how little it resembles a documentary in the conventional sense. Instead, it drops you straight into a crumbling Long Island mansion in 1975 shared by Edith and Edie Beale – a mother and daughter who just happen to be forgotten relatives of Jackie Kennedy – and lets them take over completely. Fur coats, headscarves, show tunes, and bickering – part Miss Havisham, part Gypsy Rose Lee – the Beales turn domestic decay into theatre.

If the seasonal urge to clean has turned your home into a source of quiet guilt, Grey Gardens is strangely reassuring. The Beale house was actually deemed uninhabitable – raccoons in the attic, feral cats everywhere, walls collapsing. And yet Edith and Edie refused to leave. I always come away thinking this isn’t really a film about eccentricity or excess, but about survival – about what it means to keep going when the world has moved on without you. Their story became so iconic it eventually led to a 2009 Hollywood remake starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange, plus an off-Broadway musical in 2006. It’s a funny, uncomfortable, and oddly moving argument for the value of chaos. So, put down the bin bags and get hoarding.

– Anna Stafford