Review: ‘Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel’ Explores Residents’ Lives

Ipart company with other critics in harboring a strong disregard for Grey Gardens, the plotless 1975 fly-on-the-wall documentary in which two bonkers old cat ladies natter about nothing in their upended-dumpster of a house for 90 punitively dull minutes. (Oh, they were related to Jackie Kennedy? Somehow, that still doesn’t make them interesting.)

Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel aspires to be the Grey Gardens of Manhattan’s famously counterculture-friendly inn, and it succeeds too well. Directed by a pair of Belgians, Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier, who eschew standard techniques such as identifying who is speaking or providing narration or other context, the film only glancingly refers to the Chelsea Hotel’s long history, which includes such frightful events as the murder of Nancy Spungeon by her punk boyfriend Sid Vicious and the photo shoot for Madonna’s book Sex.

About the Author

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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Ipart company with other critics in harboring a strong disregard for Grey Gardens, the plotless 1975 fly-on-the-wall documentary in which two bonkers old cat ladies natter about nothing in their upended-dumpster of a house for 90 punitively dull minutes. (Oh, they were related to Jackie Kennedy? Somehow, that still doesn’t make them interesting.)

Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel aspires to be the Grey Gardens of Manhattan’s famously counterculture-friendly inn, and it succeeds too well. Directed by a pair of Belgians, Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier, who eschew standard techniques such as identifying who is speaking or providing narration or other context, the film only glancingly refers to the Chelsea Hotel’s long history, which includes such frightful events as the murder of Nancy Spungeon by her punk boyfriend Sid Vicious and the photo shoot for Madonna’s book Sex.