AllMovie

By now, few will remember the tragic kidnapping of the grandson of the man who, in the '60s, was the world's richest man, J. Paul Getty. Getty, a paranoid and miserly man, refused to pay ransom for his handsome, ne'er do well grandson, J. Paul Getty III. He may have believed that the boy engineered it himself, as a means to get some money out of the old skinflint. As a result, the boy was mutilated by his kidnappers (his ear was sliced off) in an attempt to persuade the old man of the seriousness of their intentions. As it happened, the kidnappers made two mistakes: one was to attempt to extort money from the world's richest miser, the other was in their handling of the boy, who managed to escape. Had it not been for those events, the world's media spotlight would probably have passed the otherwise undistinguished young man by. In this documentary, which assumes familiarity with these events, the troubled life and loves of the grandson's wife and her sister, luminous and beautiful twins from Switzerland, are explored in the light of the boy's tragic life. When Gisela married him, he was a handsome, charming, darling of the jet-set, and fully expected to inherit some portion of his grandfather's billions. In the kidnapping and its aftermath, not only did he become melancholy and erratic, ever more prone to dangerous drug use, but he was cut out of his grandfather's will. Angela, who was accused of being a gold-digger, loyally stuck by his side through all their ups and downs. In fact, even after J. Paul Getty III was rendered permanently comatose following an accident, she remained with him. One gathers that the marriage was something of a ménàge à trois, because Gisela's twin, Jutta, rarely left her side.