Least interesting: Peter Beard, his collages, photographs, house and the quick footage in the beginning of his celebrity pals.
Most interesting: Big and Little Edie in all their time-capsule glory, and Lee Bouvier Radziwell's visits with them at Grey Gardens.
That Summer is comprised of mostly archival footage, interspersed with Beard's reminiscences and images. The loose premise of the early footage was to capture something of the old Hamptons, before it was saturated with the super wealthy. Lee, Beard and the Maysles fall into the wormhole of the Beales's lives, and the women's eccentricities end up being more fascinating than anything else.
If you are curious about what inspired the Maysles to make their film, this is definitely worth watching. Lee is a lovely presence who is kind to and appreciative of her relatives.
Plot summary
Montauk, East Hampton, New York, 2016. Peter Beard discusses his work as a photographer, artist and diarist before reminiscing about his attempt to make a documentary in the summer of 1972 with his friend Lee Radziwill (younger sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis),focusing on their childhood and the 20th- century history of East Hampton.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Tech specs
720p.WEB 1080p.WEBMovie Reviews
For Grey Garden movie lovers
Narcissism run riot.
Narcissism run riot and for collectors of celebrity gossip and curios only. "That Summer" is something of a companion piece to "Grey Gardens" featuring some of the same characters, (the Beales, mostly),but it's really nothing more than the home-movies of Peter Beard, whose friends included Lee Radziwill, Jackie Kennedy-Onassis, Truman Capote. Andy Warhol etc. and it's full of the indolent doodlings of the super-rich. These people are so cut off from the real world they may as well be living on Mars. What's more, the cheap home-movie look of the picture is positively headache-inducing at times and like "Grey Gardens", there's something ghoulish about it but at least "Grey Gardens" felt like a real film, despite being highly intrusive. This is more like a vanity project gone wrong; a road-kill of a movie if there ever was one.
Meta enough?
This is a movie about a movie that was never made, and about another movie that was made, instead. I really don't know what this adds to the story of Big Edie and Little Edie of Grey Gardens, and the film footage of the beautiful people of the 1970s is not interesting. I kept hoping for some insight, some reason to revisit Grey Gardens, but this movie doesn't have it.