Directed by Todd Haynes
Where & When: Los Feliz 3 Theatres, Los Angeles, CA. November 20, 2023 1:30 PM
Available to stream now on Netflix
"May December", the latest fascinating, transgressive work from filmmaker, Todd Haynes, looks at a relationship, deemed by many as highly inappropriate and disturbing due to the extreme age difference between the couple, years after their affair was revealed to the world in a shocking scandal. Yet the film becomes cleverly very meta as an actress arrives to study the participants in order to play the woman involved in this infamous case for an upcoming movie.
Arriving in Savannah, the actress, Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) attends a festive gathering at the home of Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore) and her husband, Joe (Charles Melton). The couple's history goes back twenty-three years ago when a thirteen-year-old, Joe was hired to work part-time at a pet shop where Gracie, the thirty-six-year-old married mother of three children, also worked. They were caught having sex in the back of the store, leading to her arrest and Gracie having their first child while in prison.
Gracie and Joe seemed to have weathered the scandal, now living largely out of the public glare although they still occasionally receive packages filled with feces to their home. They are the parents to three children with their eldest, Honor (Piper Curda) attending college while the twins, Charlie (Gabriel Chung) and Mary (Elizabeth Yu) are preparing to graduate from high school.
With seemingly unlimited access and not wanting to waste any time, Elizabeth quickly begins her research, interviewing anybody willing to talk who are in the couple's orbit. And that seems to be everyone from Gracie's ex-husband (D. W. Moffett) to the son of the owner of the pet store and with Georgie (Cory Michael Smith), one of Gracie's older children who clearly is more troubled than his parents will acknowledge. But her real focus is on Joe, trying to connect with him through gentle persuasion and coy seduction.
Since his audacious debut with the queer-themed "Poison" over thirty years ago, Haynes has been a filmmaker who created works of cinema that were provocative and challenging. And while he has continued to make films with unconventional themes, audiences began to embrace his movies on a wider scale and even when he ventured into more commercial fare (the legal thriller, "Dark Waters", the HBO miniseries, "Mildred Pierce"), Haynes found a way to add his own distinctive style to the material. "May December" certainly is a subversive subject filled with his sense of wit and playfulness. And if this story sounds familiar, it should. Inspired by the Mary Kay Letourneau case, which involved this middle school teacher who began an intimate relationship with one of her students, Haynes has crafted his take as a cross between a Douglas Sirk styled melodrama and a modern "ripped-from-the headlines" tabloid exploitation. The film's score, adapted by Marcelo Zarvos from Michel Legrand's music for the 1971 British drama, "The Go-Between", is dramatic and jarring, intended to add even more offbeat tension to the story.
As an actress on a mission to learn all she can in order to perfectly inhabit this role, Portman's Elizabeth may appear laid-back and unassuming on the surface, yet she is alarmingly ruthless, unconcerned with the fallout from her reopening of old wounds or the potential damage that could come from her relentless pursuit. And while Gracie may come across as serene nurturer, offering warm smiles and a welcoming disposition, and defers to her husband to discipline the children, she keeps her family firmly under her control. The always reliable Moore skillfully plays her as unsteady with a complicated mixture of child-like impulsiveness and calculated manipulation. But the real revelation here is Melton who first received attention playing Reggie on the television series, "Riverdale". Struggling against spending most of his young life as a parent (coming across more like his children's brother than father) and unsure how to move forward as he approaches having an empty nest, the actor expertly captures the devastation this man-child goes through as he reflects on what he has missed out on and tries to have an honest discussion with his wife about their relationship. And while Elizabeth might be the most obvious in this triangle, all of them are delivering a performance, saying what they think people want to hear and, most telling, fearful that they might be caught publicly delivering a false line.
I went to see "May December" twice; the first time in a theater and the other on Netflix a few weeks later. The main reason for the repeat screening was largely because of all the recent chatter about the film being viewed as a comedy including the submission of "May December" into the musical/comedy categories for the Golden Globes. It didn't come across to me as a comedy after my first viewing and despite a few quirky moments and odd bits of offhand dialogue ("I don't think we have enough hot dogs") the film still never registered to me as much of an actual comedy, more of a drama with some comedic elements. The second viewing only reinforced my opinion that "May December" is a disquieting examination of a couple that has their long unresolved trauma and emotional conflicts together forced to the surface, after years of successfully keeping them buried, by the welcomed dramatic recreation of the problematic beginning of their relationship. Thoughtfully executed, expertly performed and yes, with moments of dark humor, Haynes has made "May December" into a mesmerizing film that has you riveted to the screen as unsettling secrets and confessions are gradually revealed yet also leaves you feeling extremely uncomfortable afterwards from this knowledge.
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