Movie Review: May December
Viewers who assume Todd Haynes’ May December is a thinly veiled revisit of the Mary Kay Letourneau story aren’t exactly wrong, nor are those who flip on the Netflix movie hoping for something a bit tawdry and high camp. But those viewers also play right into Haynes’ hands, as his movie is a more thoughtful look at the complex individuals behind the tabloid fodder and the flimsy line between understanding and exploitation.
Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) is an actress who arrives in a Savannah neighborhood to study Gracie (Julianne Moore), a woman who, years back, slept with her teenage coworker, Joe (Charles Melton), went to prison, had his baby and married him. A movie is being made about the affair and Elizabeth is portraying Gracie. She comes to town eager to take on a meatier role than the one she has on the TV show Nora’s Ark – which is popular, but not exactly high art – and she wants to know everything about Gracie, Joe, their town and their affair.
Gracie and Joe’s story is a very loosely adapted version of Letourneau’s and countless other salacious affairs turned into campy Lifetime movies over the years. They’re the type of shocking, taboo tales that people turn to for empty calories and over-the-top drama. And Haynes understands that, telling the story of these characters as a piece of heightened camp, perfectly struck in the movie’s opening minutes as Gracie is preparing for Elizabeth’s arrival, opens the fridge and – as the camera zooms in and the score grows ominous – mutters “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs.”
It’s a laughable, ludicrous moment by intention, an acknowledgement that most movies’ understandings of these characters play up the tawdry and tasteless. And Haynes weaves that tone throughout the film, returning to it as Elizabeth immerses herself in the story and shows a bizarre fascination with the tiniest details, including a probably unhygienic bit of Method practice on a pet shop floor. But Haynes is less interested in shock and drama as he is in understanding how events like the affair between Joe and Gracie reverberate and shape their lives and how the truths behind those moments might not be properly understood – even by their participants – until decades later.
Working from a thoughtful script by Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik, Haynes peers into the inner lives of characters who have spent much of their adulthood in the public eye. Gracie and Joe’s relationship started as a crime, but decades later, they are still married and seem to have a happy life. Their kids are old enough that Joe has children going off to college before he’s 40, but by all accounts the two seem to be happy and solid, not thinking too much about how their encounter might have affected their lives until Elizabeth comes to town to stir up their past.
The film is a feast for its actors. Moore, unsurprisingly, finds the complexity in Gracie, the sadness, desperation and naivety that may have caused her to engage in a dalliance with a teenage boy as she was in an unhappy marriage. She affixes a slight lisp to Gracie that gives her a vulnerability, but she also understands that there are undealt-with mental issues she might be facing. She is fragile, bursting into tears when clients cancel bakery orders, and prone to fits of high emotion. And yet, she can also be cutting with her remarks to her daughter and there’s a fierce maternal instinct that kicks in when needed – and there’s also the fact that her relationship with Joe often feels more motherly than marital.
Charles Melton’s performance as Joe is the quiet heart of the movie. Joe is thoughtful and kind, and more open to Elizabeth coming to pick apart the family history than Gracie is. And yet, Melton portrays a man who is just becoming aware of the fact that a quick jump into adulthood might not have been the best for him. It’s suggested that he’s secretly texting a romantic interest behind Gracie’s back, and a discussion with his kids late in the movie showcases just how aware he is that his adult guidance is likely lacking; his lament that he doesn’t know whether he’s helping up his son or screwing up his life in real time might be the film’s most honest line of dialogue.
Gracie and Joe’s marriage is complex, imperfect but not a disaster. Yes, Joe is starting to wonder if there’s life outside of Gracie, and she absolutely has some issues she needs to address. It’s unclear whether there’s much of a future for them, but at the time, the two are content to not address their past and just ignore the random boxes of poop that eventually are left on their doorstep.
Natalie Portman (left) and Julianne Moore in “May December.” Photo by Francois Duhamel / Courtesy of Netflix
It’s Elizabeth who throws a bomb into the relationship, coming to town under the guise of honoring Gracie’s truth but in reality seeking her own experience with “truth” by any means necessary. She’s the same age Gracie was when she began her affair with Joe, and Elizabeth is obsessed with tapping into some sort of authenticity, even if that includes an awkward Q&A session with some high school students or getting close with Joe in a way that causes him to reflect on his own role as victim – something he may not have reflected on before. It’s a career highlight for Portman, who’s never better than when she’s tapping into her characters’ darker sides.
Haynes weaves an unsettling, often insightful and sometimes uncomfortably funny study of the way these three characters collide. His camera loves to study his actresses; two scenes featuring Portman and Moore side by side in bathrooms and changing rooms, the former studying and trying to become the latter, are some of the most exquisitely filmed of the year. The camp trappings are important, a reminder that these stories are often treated as shallow and simple, the real people behind them nothing more than imbeciles whose problems become our amusement. But May December suggests that behind the headlines are complex people unaware of how their deeds might reverberate years down the road. It’s a fascinating and beautifully told study.
