I saw this doc many years ago on TV and had a recent viewing.
It's still challenging to watch it without enormous compassion for these obviously disturbed, mentally ill mother and daughter duo living in squalor and filth in a dilapidated old mansion on the coast. The aunt and cousin of the late Jackie Onassis.
Cats and racoons run amok in this horror of a place (and I understand it was cleaned before the film makers came to intrude and document the lives of the two women.
This time I found it exploitive. Today (not back then) we recognize that hoarding and living in such appalling surroundings, no running water, holes in the walls, cat urine, eating cat food (they spread it on crackers) is a sign of severe mental illness.
Edith and Edie are immune to it all, savouring the past - they were beauties in their time - and have a passive agressive endless argument going with each other. Clothing is optional.
Edie wears blouses and sweaters tied up around her head due to skin condition of baldness.
Like a train wreck, it's impossible to look away but I am shocked that a health department wasn't called in to fumigate and rescue these two.
A huge level of exploitation by the two brothers who filmed it all and the final insult was in not putting the names of the women in the credits.
They were used in their utmost vulnerability.
It's still challenging to watch it without enormous compassion for these obviously disturbed, mentally ill mother and daughter duo living in squalor and filth in a dilapidated old mansion on the coast. The aunt and cousin of the late Jackie Onassis.
Cats and racoons run amok in this horror of a place (and I understand it was cleaned before the film makers came to intrude and document the lives of the two women.
This time I found it exploitive. Today (not back then) we recognize that hoarding and living in such appalling surroundings, no running water, holes in the walls, cat urine, eating cat food (they spread it on crackers) is a sign of severe mental illness.
Edith and Edie are immune to it all, savouring the past - they were beauties in their time - and have a passive agressive endless argument going with each other. Clothing is optional.
Edie wears blouses and sweaters tied up around her head due to skin condition of baldness.
Like a train wreck, it's impossible to look away but I am shocked that a health department wasn't called in to fumigate and rescue these two.
A huge level of exploitation by the two brothers who filmed it all and the final insult was in not putting the names of the women in the credits.
They were used in their utmost vulnerability.