May December
Todd Haynes turns tabloid fodder into art in this wickedly smart dramedy
Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore tangle with identity and truth in Todd Haynes' May December.
Twenty years after she went to jail for statutory rape, things have worked out pretty well for Gracie (Julianne Moore). She gave birth in jail, got paroled, married her victim, had three more kids, and is living a seemingly idyllic life in a rambling house overlooking the water on Tybee Island. She and her child groom have been accepted back into her neighborhood, they even cordially greet Gracie’s ex-husband and children from her first marriage when they’re out and about. Except for “judgmental outsiders” that still send hate mail (and scatological packages), Gracie and the town have moved on with their lives. According to Gracie, she simply met her soulmate and fell in love. In her naivety, it didn’t occur to her that anything she did was wrong.
She’s so confident in the choices she’s made that she even allows actress Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) to shadow her family. Elizabeth is hoping to star in a movie about the affair — a tasteful one, Elizabeth assures everyone who will listen, not like the tabloid-fodder made-for-TV-movie that aired right after Gracie’s arrest. But as Elizabeth starts to pick at the suburban dream Joe and Gracie show to the world, fissures begin to form on the façade.
As the pieces begin to fall, Gracie, Joe, and Elizabeth will have to reckon with who they truly are and what that means to them and the world.
A twisting drama that evokes both Hitchcock and Bergman, May December is a nuanced look at how willful blindness and our need to make ourselves the heroes in our own story make villains of us all.
Director Todd Haynes knows what type of movie his audience is expecting. He even meets those expectations briefly by showing us clips from the lurid TV Movie portraying Gracie and Joe’s relationship. Smartly, he never fully gives in to the salaciousness of the story, but he does play with the tropes one might expect from such a melodramatic premise. Marcelo Zarvos adapted and augmented the score from 1971’s The Go-Between (itself a story about a 13-year-old boy who becomes a cog in a clandestine affair). Haynes uses the music’s dramatic flourishes to undercut the drama and bring humor into a movie that deals with horrifying subjects.
It’s the subversion of his subject matter that elevates May December from a titillating story to a fascinating character study. At every turn, Haynes seems to subvert genre expectations while still laying out an intricate, complex story. Take note of how often mirrors and reflections are used as one character tries to get to the truth of another. May December is a movie about humanity’s impulse to obsess over “the truth” of scandals while ignoring truths about themselves. It’s so much easier to reflect on others rather than inspect yourself.
Haynes himself referenced Bergman’s Persona as inspiration for the sparring relationship between Elizabeth and Gracie. Both women are wolves in sheep’s clothing as they pick at each other throughout the film. But Haynes, who toyed with dismantling the picturesque domestic lives in his Douglas Sirk-inspired Far from Heaven, also seems to be pulling from Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. Like Hitchcock, he takes great joy in making the safe and wholesome seem disturbing and dangerous the second the glossy surface is disturbed.
And that’s the core of Moore’s Gracie, who superficially seems to be a meek little girl-child of a woman. She tries to play herself as a modern Blanche DuBois, hopelessly naïve in a world that takes advantage of that fact. But there’s something steely in her girlish affectations which makes the audience wonder if she’s more Stanley Kowalski than Blanche. Her lisp, which is sweet and childish upon first meeting, gets more pronounced when she’s pressed on details of the affair. Her fragility turns to brittle fussiness when things don’t go her way. And though she plays the perfect wife and mother, her children with Joe seem to resent her deeply. The only control she has left, she exerts over Joe, who she micromanages like a helicopter mom. It’s a creepy performance that gets more disturbing as the film goes on and should get Moore some accolades as awards season heats up.
Sparring with Gracie is the equally self-serving Elizabeth. While she presents herself as a sympathetic creature, Elizabeth only cares about making a good movie. Her care and empathy are tools to pry at Gracie and Joe’s family, hoping to expose some fact or detail that would only be told to a trusted friend. When she and Gracie begin to mirror each other, there seems to be an instinctual recognition between them — predators acknowledging each other as they vie for a quarry. Portman is delightful as Elizabeth, with a soft voice and placid mannerisms designed to set everyone at ease even as her keen, watchful eyes seek out any weak point she can find.
The only person who seems lost in this battle of wills is poor Joe, who is just coming to terms with the fact that his wife may have groomed and manipulated him into a life he never would have chosen for himself. As Elizabeth prods at the family unit and his children prepare to leave for college, Joe is left alone with his thoughts — a truly terrifying prospect for someone used to the constant control Gracie exerts over his life. He is a man interrupted, playing out a kid’s idea of manhood by watching reruns of This Old House and drinking beer. Melton is fantastic in the role, hunching and mumbling like a sullen teen in a man’s body. It’s like watching a very dark version of Big.
Whether you’re a fan of tight scripting or just want to watch Portman and Moore engage in a stunningly tense faceoff, May December is well worth the watch. This is a film that rewards you for paying attention as every line of dialogue and every shot informs the larger story. So resist the urge to scroll and settle in for two hours of excellent filmmaking.
Verdict: Moore and Portman are at their vicious best in this tense and hilarious dramedy.
May December is rated R and is available Dec. 1 on Netflix.
