(4.5 / 5)
The latest film from director Todd Haynes, May December is a misleadingly sunny exploration of uncomfortable truths.
Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) is a popular actor who has travelled to Savannah, Georgia, to spend some time with Gracie (Julianne Moore), who she is due to play in an upcoming TV movie.
26 years ago, Gracie, then in her mid thirties, went to prison for having sex with a 13-year-old. Now, decades on, Gracie and Joe (Charles Melton) are married with a seemingly idyllic life, three college-aged kids and a waterside home, but the scandal still lingers. The upcoming movie could encourage sympathy or ruin them.
It’s the stuff of melodrama, but Samy Burch’s screenplay handles the sensationalist material with remarkable subtlety. Christopher Blauvelt’s bright, hazy cinematography and Marcelo Carves’ full-bore score, adapted from Michel Legrand’s work on The Go-Getters, belie the complexity of the dramatic situation, the questions that are being posed.
Are Elizabeth’s motivations truly about understanding Gracie and Joe’s relationship, or is she just looking for a simplified version she can portray? Is Gracie a predator, or a victim of her own naivety? Is Joe a grown, consenting adult even now or is he still in denial?
This would mean little without a triumvirate of superb performances. Portman brings a touch of Jackie Kennedy to Elizabeth, whose soft-spoken composure presents an enigma to Gracie and Joe. Moore’s lisping Gracie is a devoted homemaker; more concerned with baking cakes than the boxes of faeces that arrive in the mail. Joe is quiet, watchful, compliant, but deeply ambivalent about his lot in life. His conservation of Monarch butterflies provides a hint to his dissatisfaction, as well as a nice Lynchian motif.
In one tragicomic scene, a stoned Joe panics aloud as to whether he’s bonding with his son, Charlie (Gabriel Chung), or creating a bad memory for him in real time. This resonates with a key theme of May December: how much of this is unforgivable trauma and how much is just life? The film’s ending perfectly encapsulates the notion that, ultimately, all you can do is make choices. Seeing this would be a good one.
