That Sum­mer

Swedish direc­tor Göran Hugo Ols­son has formed a niche for him­self out of edit­ing found footage into doc­u­men­tary essays, kind of like adopt­ing home­less chil­dren instead of adding anoth­er soul to the glob­al pop­u­la­tion. ​“There is absolute­ly no need for a per­son like me to make a film,” is his brac­ing­ly hum­ble log­ic behind works such as The Black Pow­er Mix­tape 1967- 75, Con­cern­ing Vio­lence and now That Sum­mer.

Soft­er in tone than the for­mer titles, which engaged deeply with the fight against struc­tur­al racism, his lat­est is also gen­tler than the cel­e­brat­ed Albert and David Maysles doc­u­men­tary, Grey Gar­dens, which bears a com­par­i­son as this new/​old film takes place in the same chaot­ic East Hampton’s house. Com­posed of four reels of grat­i­fy­ing­ly grainy footage shot dur­ing the sum­mer of 1972, this is an airy and full-heart­ed mon­u­ment to the over­shad­owed ones.

Lee Radzi­will, sis­ter of Jack­ie Bouvier/​Kennedy/​Onassis, is the hook who draws her film­mak­er beau Peter Beard to the wild home of her rel­a­tives, Big and Lit­tle Edie, intend­ing to make a sto­ry about her child­hood. Focus shifts as she finds the moth­er and daugh­ter reclus­es who shot to noto­ri­ety after Health Depart­ment raids on their dilap­i­dat­ed man­sion were report­ed in the press.

Radzi­will, who is side­lined in the Maysles’ doc, is cast as a roman­tic fig­ure waft­ing in and out of shot, warm­ly liais­ing with her cousins on the mat­ter of home improve­ment, ​“She was so beau­ti­ful” says a present-day Beard in voiceover. He is pret­ty roman­tic him­self, shown on hands and knees mak­ing giant nos­tal­gic artworks.

While the Maysles’ doc­u­men­tary has a cer­tain terse­ness, the opti­mistic sen­si­bil­i­ty of Peter Beard per­me­ates this ambling slice of sum­mer life, show­ing the Edies as some­how freed by their eccen­tric sta­tion in life, and almost child­ish­ly delight­ed by the pres­ence of their cher­ished Lee. ​“Just be nat­ur­al, that’s the great­est beau­ty you can have,” says Big Edie, eat­ing ice cream. She’s not wrong.