April 16 (Bloomberg) -- Some of us have a crazy aunt in the attic. Jackie Kennedy had a deeply eccentric one in the Hamptons.

Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, known as “Big Edie,” and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale, nicknamed “Little Edie,” were every bit as strange as Jackie was sleek and sophisticated. Their bizarre lives are portrayed in “Grey Gardens,” a mesmerizing movie starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore that airs April 18 on HBO at 8 p.m. New York time.

It’s based on a 1975 documentary about the odd couple, who lived in a dilapidated 28-room mansion in East Hampton, New York. The dramatic film, which spans 40 years, tells how the mother and daughter went from riches to rags, starting in 1936 when Little Edie (Barrymore) is about to come out as a debutante in New York.

“You’ll never get a man to propose to you if you don’t have a debut,” Big Edie (Lange) advises.

Little Edie has other dreams. She wants a stage career and flees her party, only to be tracked down by her mom, who delivers a pair of whoppers: “You can have your cake and eat it too in this life” and “Get married and you can do whatever you want.”

As the film progresses, we watch the cake disappear, along with Big Edie’s husband, Little Edie’s lover and both ladies’ hopes for fame.

Raccoons

Big Edie’s marriage was no advertisement for marital bliss. While her husband Phelan (Ken Howard) practiced law in New York and love with his secretary, the aspiring singer stayed home with her glib accompanist, George “Gould” Strong (Malcolm Gets), who eventually bolted.

Little Edie’s flame, former Secretary of the Interior Julius “Cap” Krug (Daniel Baldwin), dumped her to protect his marriage. At her moment of crisis, her mom convinced Little Edie to come home to Grey Gardens, where neither found any time for housework.

The house was filled with trash, raccoons, cats. If excrement were gold, the Beales would have made the Rockefellers look like paupers.

In the early 1970s the health department moved in, and media reports brought the former First Lady into the picture. Her visit is one of the film’s most captivating moments.

Jackie’s Visit

Jackie (Jeanne Tripplehorn) rolls up in a chauffeured Lincoln, totally composed until she enters the house.

“That cat is going to the bathroom right in back of your portrait,” she tells Big Edie, who takes it in stride.

They repair to the gardens, where Little Edie tells Jackie she had dated John Kennedy’s old brother Joseph, who was later killed in a plane crash. Had history taken a different turn, Little Edie says, she could have ended up as First Lady.

“I wish it had been you, Edie. I really do,” a world- weary Jackie responds. It’s hard not to sympathize, especially when Edie asks, “Is it true that Jack Kennedy gave you gonorrhea?”

Lange and Barrymore give brilliant performances, with Lange’s character undergoing the greatest change. She starts out as a saucy babe and ends a gray, sagging crone who cooks sausages on a hot plate parked on her bedside table. Barrymore’s transformation isn’t quite as dramatic, though she seems to have become a bit battier than dear old mom.

Cabaret Performer

Director/writer Michael Sucsy’s script shows mother and daughter caught in a cycle of hostility and sympathy.

When Little Edie says her mom won’t like the documentary because it will tell the “truth about how you’ve held me back all these years,” Big Edie shoots back: “If you’re stuck Edie, it’s only with yourself.”

Little Edie finally left Grey Gardens after her mother died in 1977. She fulfilled her dream of performing in cabarets (though to bad reviews) before her death in 2002.

She was never the star she hoped to be, though her view of the documentary could be applied to this sparkling portrayal of her life: “If you don’t win 90 prizes for this movie I’ll be very surprised.”

(Dave Shiflett is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this story: Dave Shiflett at dshifl@aol.com.

Last Updated: April 16, 2009 00:01 EDT