Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.
There’s a lurid, made-for-t.v. movie quality that gives “May December” a wicked streak that’s both tongue-in-cheek and deliciously potent. Director Todd Haynes creates a complex film about objective truth, distorted reality, and the perils of desire in this dramatic tale of toxic feminity that’s played with a bit of wit and camp.
It’s been over two decades since their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, and Gracie (Julianne Moore) and her husband Joe (Charles Melton) are preparing for an empty nest as their twins are ready to graduate from high school. The pair began an illicit relationship when she was in her thirties and he was only 13, but they’ve played it as a romance for the ages. Their dynamics unravel under the pressure when Hollywood actress Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) comes to spend time with the family. She’ll be playing Gracie in a film about her past with Joe, and Elizabeth wants to better understand the woman she will be embodying on screen. As the two women study each other, they begin to notice the differences as well as the similarities, and everyone (including Joe) finds themselves heading down a difficult path of self-examination and doubt.
It’s a story about the relationship between an actor and her subject, but the film turns its focus onto Joe as the narrative progresses. A victim of statutory rape when he was barely a teen, Joe is now in his late thirties but has never processed the trauma of what happened to him. A lot of that is a result of how Gracie has spun their story as one that’s filled with romance and love, but Joe experiences an eventual awakening and realizes that he’s actually been the prey of a sexual predator who has controlled his entire life.
Haynes relies on a lot of overt symbolism to get this point across (including scenes with the most obvious one of all: butterflies), but it all adds to the somewhat corny tone of the film. There are abrupt piano “bangs” in the soundtrack that are hilarious (intentional or not, that remains up for debate), but you’ll feel a bit icky for laughing at the situation. There’s nothing funny about an adult woman taking advantage of a child, and the origin of their relationship is something that still has power and continues to hang over their marriage.
Unpredictability is the film’s greatest asset, and the story winds up in the most unusual of places. Portman is fantastic as an actress with second-rate talent, and she chews the scenery with such a gentle and authentic touch that it may having you wondering if Portman herself actually is a bad actor (she’s not). Elizabeth’s processes to transform herself into a character go too far, especially when she begins to live her own fantasy life of actually becoming Gracie. Moore and Melton give excellent performances here too, she as a narcissist who lives in a world that’s not entirely based on reality and he as a grown man filled with regret.
“May December” has an interesting script that’s open to interpretation, and Haynes has made an entertaining character study of complicated, flawed people who have made some truly terrible decisions in their lives.
