That Summer

If the deliciously grainy archival footage were the only thing That Summer had to offer, it would be enough. But by including Beard and Radziwill’s introspective voiceovers, Swedish director Göran Hugo Olsson (“The Black Power Mixtape”) creates a nostalgic meditation that touches on both cultural and historical memory.

Almost exclusively composed of 16mm footage shot in 1972 and lost until now, Göran Hugo Olsson’s fascinating documentary recounts the summer when Lee Radziwill and photographer Peter Beard decided to record Radziwill’s reclusive aunt and first cousin, hiring the Maysles and shooting in and around Grey Gardens while workers fixed the place up.

The lack of organization keeps this from being a complete film, or a great one. That Summer is a footnote to “Grey Gardens.” But for those wholly engrossed in the history, the tragedy and the “real Beales,” before “Grey Gardens” set their personas in stone and made them immortal, it’s a fascinating artifact and another piece of the puzzle of who they were before the caricatures took over.

The major problem with That Summer is the inescapable fact that it only barely qualifies as a movie.

That Summer, a new documentary directed by Goran Hugo Olsson, sheds further light on the Beales with footage shot before the making of “Grey Gardens.”

Offhandedly, in a movie that itself is offhanded to a fault, Little Edie cuts to the core of the whole Grey Gardens phenomenon during one of her moments alone with the camera. “[To] dig up the past, I think, is about the most cruel thing anybody can do.”

That Summer leaves me with Beale fatigue. It would seem to appeal to “Grey Gardens” completists only.