A riches to rags story, The Good Life will inevitably remind many of the Maysles Brothers' Grey Gardens. Focusing on Danish mother and daughter Mette and Anne Beckmann, director Eva Mulvad references the iconoclastic film but shows the Beckmanns in their own light with their own special relationship. Hailing from a well-to-do background, having lived in Paris and Copenhagen, the two have settled in Portugal, now living a meager life after the loss of their family fortune.
At 56, Anne has never held a job. In fact, she still fancies herself a princess, and to her getting a job is taboo. Mette's weekly €20 pension is all that the two live on. They bicker constantly, usually stemming from Anne's belief that she should have been taken care of by the family money. With a sharp eye, Mulvad observes their present life even as the two live in their past. She cuts through the sensationalism of their situation and creates an unbelievable, sad, and amusing portrait of two souls bound together for better or worse.