Manager Todd Haynesnew movie of May december, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, announced its intentions early. Through the opening credits, the film’s score—some due to Marcelo Zarvosother anthologies adapted by Zarvos from works by Michel Legrand Go between—set the stage for a movie that’s half Old Hollywood pulp, half ’90s erotic thriller. Indicates an impending temper, some sort of self-aware, flamboyant drama. itself, but not in such a classic way that it turns into a meta shtick.
Haynes isn’t really known for directing comedies. But that’s the genre May december closest to being, as dark as its problems can be. Natalie Portman plays Elizabeth Berry, a Juilliard-trained actress who starred in a hit TV series and is researching a role for an independent film. She traveled to Savannah, Georgia to meet her subject, Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), a baker and former tabloid celebrity was jailed for statutory rape after having sex with a 13-year-old boy, Joe, who worked at a pet store. that she manages. It was a big story in the 1990s, much like the story of teacher Mary Kay Letourneau in our world.
Letourneau and the boy involved eventually had children and married, separating shortly before Letourneau’s death in 2020. May december found Gracie and Joe (do Charles Meltonbelong to Riverdale reputation) under the same circumstances. Twenty years after the scandal, they were happily married. Sometimes, they are harassed or stared at. But otherwise, they manage to operate, relatively welcoming members of their community.
In the Hollywood wind to break all that. Gracie is wary of Elizabeth, but she and Joe convince themselves that she will tell their story fairly. We take this to mean that Elizabeth and the filmmakers will cover up the actual mechanics of what happened, and instead focus on the true and lasting love the couple has had since. when Gracie got out of prison. The couple’s twins, who seemed to be doing pretty well (can’t say the same for Gracie’s other kids), were preparing for college, leaving Joe – then just 36 – to face the life of an empty nester.
Possibly destabilizing her presence, Elizabeth is really just igniting the rifts that already exist in this fraught relationship, which has so far been perpetuated by innocence. Joe’s strange (but understandable) childishness and Gracie’s strict management of their household affairs. Gracie is an eccentric person, prone to emotional swings, and adept at acidic compliments. (Which means, she’s the perfect role for Moore.) It’s no surprise that Elizabeth was instantly captivated. What a character. And what a story, a tragic comedy can actually be (well, almost certainly) a tragedy.
With a lightness not quite typical of Haynes, May december fascinatingly explores its moral aspects, one foot firmly planted in the camp’s realm while the other finds out where to land. At various points, it looks like the film will be turned into a thriller—what happens to Elizabeth’s asthma and the heavy harbinger of Gracie’s love of hunting. At other times, the series might turn to a solemn drama about humble people just trying to live a decent life in the years following the media craze.
Ultimately, the film is neither a thriller nor a drama. Samy BurchHis script is full of idiosyncratic humor, not quite John’s country but somewhere on the way there. Softening the humor is, at least in part, the film’s intended compassion for these people, for the way their lives have been healed — but not actually healed — of their lives. terrible transgressions in the past. They are trapped in an apologetic illusion. In that light, it is perhaps only Elizabeth, played by the astute Portman, who is truly cynical, a vampire artist troubling these strange waters to study the reactions of her species. fish.
Maybe the film is a satire of the entertainment industry in that way, the frivolous and manipulative Elizabeth stands in the face of all of Hollywood’s exploitation of real life. In one scene, Elizabeth visits the local high school’s theater club for a little Q&A with the students. She quickly begins a passionate monologue about sex scenes (probably trying to excite a particular boy, possibly to try that kind of seduction on purpose – for research, of course) before insulting Gracie in the face of her daughter. . Any reassurance Elizabeth offered that she was there to observe this family objectively was quickly dispelled. She’s come to provoke the weirdos on their show, with the understanding that Elizabeth’s fans will one day pay to see her curated rendition.
Then again, how much compassion does Gracie really deserve? May december presents a complicated moral equation — even the film itself is a quandary. How much should we laugh about this, or with this? That assessment will have to be made in the eyes of each audience member. However, on the first viewing, I saw May december becomes a fun evil, complicated, strange and clever and just humane enough to rescue yourself from the doldrums. Its two main performances are hilarious, while Melton deftly delivers the heart — and heartache — of the film. May december feels like a return to Haynes’ original roots, a stylistic character study that, when examined more closely, can actually have an entire culture — art, sexual practices — in its quick mind.
