Cinema Review: That Summer


Posted May 28, 2018 in Cinema Reviews

That Summer

Director: Göran Hugo Olsson

Released: 1 June

There’s a scene in Göran Hugo Olsson’s That Summer where a middle-aged Little Edie (cousin to Jacqueline Kennedy) poses in a shabby armchair that has been abandoned in the woods surrounding the dilapidated house in which she and her mother (Big Edie) live. From her seat she explains, in that long-gone accent that drips wealth and regality, that no one ever uses the chair. “So we called it the Disappointed Chair,” she adds, as if tapping ash from a cigarette. Endlessly speaking and endlessly quotable, Little Edie appears always with a scarf wrapped around her head, focusing our attention on her eyes, forcing us to take her seriously when she points to a cat called Teddy Kennedy and demands, “Can’t you see the resemblance?”

If you were to condense Olsson’s documentary – which mines footage from the Maysles (who would go on to make the renowned documentary Grey Gardens) and narration from Lee Radziwill (Jacqueline Kennedy’s sister) and photographer Peter Beard – into one singular, silent image, it would be that of the aged beauty brooding in self-inflicted exile from the world.

There is an apposite alignment between subject and form here, considering the footage has spent the last five decades in obscurity. We get glimpses of Peter Beard’s work, including some of his striking collages, as well as some charming scenes of Andy Warhol: he broods on a bench, hand on hip, waiting for Beard’s camera to leave him alone; and he is goofy, arms bent and fingers splayed as he skulks like a dinosaur toward one of the children. But the majority of the film is spent observing the reclusive mother and daughter as they bicker, laugh, mourn, sing, and try to the best of their abilities to live as they wish.

One scene shows Big Edie answering the telephone while singing “parlez moi d’amour,” and we are struck, hard, by the sheer devotion of these women to commit to their oddities, to pour forth in one blazing hue. They are, as Peter says, from “the old world.” One can only lament not having found them sooner.

Words: John Vaughan

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