2023 Movie
Dir. Todd Haynes · United States of America · English, French
A brilliantly crafted psychosocial drama sees Todd Haynes shine as brightly as he did with Carol
The colloquial phrase “May-December” refers to romantic partners with a large age gap, but leave it to Todd Haynes to craft a poetic and unsettling world out of this (slightly troubling) banality of life. His new film is loosely based on the real case of Mary Kay Letourneau, who in 1997 was convicted as a sex offender after being caught having a relationship with a minor, a student of hers, 12 years old (22 years her junior). May December begins twenty years after the tabloid scandal surrounding the marriage of Joe and Gracie has died down. Elizabeth, an actress, is conducting research in preparation to play Gracie in a film production, but she doesn’t know what to expect. Alongside her, we are welcomed into the family home, meet their teenage children, sit through their family dinners, marvelling at the levity and nonchalant atmosphere in the air. Something is missing, or at least that’s what Elizabeth suspects. A psychological drama-thriller-black comedy, May December is impossible to pin down. A profound film on human confusion, identities, and past traumas, it unites two of the best Hollywood stars, Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, in a delightfully eerie play of doubling and revelations.
Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.
"The result is engaging and resonant—but it nonetheless feels incomplete, unfinished."
— Richard Brody
"Todd Haynes’s latest is a brilliant ode to female toxicity that begins at a place of camp and ends at one that’s closer to horror."
— Alison Willmore
Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton), a couple with a big age gap, welcome an actress (Natalie Portman) to their house, marriage, and family as she prepares to play the wife in an upcoming film.
Aside from the obvious praise that has to be given to Moore and Portman—no one expects anything less!—a particularly alluring facet of this film is Christopher Blauvelt's provocative camerawork. Even if he wasn't originally supposed to lens the feature, we are so glad he did. His previous work with Kelly Reichardt, Sofia Coppola, Mike Mills, and Noah Baumbach already frames him as a fluid figure between arthouse and mainstream, but his style always captures the essence of the character's inner conflict. In May December, too, he is a documenteur of interiority, using sharp compositions and occasional swish movements to reveal truths about the protagonists by concealing their motivations. A very subtle, but exquisite in its minimalism, kind of work, but it conveys the ineffable tensions, central to the film's premise.
Charles Melton's Riverdale-to-Julianne-Moore's-Arms pipeline is very impressive, to say the least.
Oscars
1 nom
Cannes
1 nom
Golden Globes
4 noms
Spirit Awards
1 win · 4 noms
WGA
1 nom
NYFCC
2 wins
LAFCA
1 nom
Savina Petkova, PhD, is a Bulgarian film critic and curator based in London whose work has appeared in Sight and Sound, Variety, Little White Lies, Cineuropa, and MUBI Notebook. She is the Programming Lead for Cambridge Film Festival and a senior editor at Talking Shorts, with a focus on contemporary European cinema.
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