May December

2023's MAY DECEMBER really caught me off guard.  I had done a bit of reading up on director Todd Haynes' latest and expected a straight drama reflecting what he cited as influences, namely the works of Ingmar Bergman.  Within that is a rather sly comedy and sometimes broad melodrama resembling a soap opera and a parody of one.  Watching the film is an odd, discomforting experience.  I'm not sure Haynes truly had a handle on the tone, which doesn't seem to waver yet what we're seeing and hearing belies the seriousness of the subject.  In other words, Todd is really fucking with us this time.  Maybe similar to the way Paul Thomas Anderson did with THERE WILL BE BLOOD. 

So I think I need to watch this again.  Now that I know the method.  It's a risky choice, and ultimately I don't feel it entirely worked.  Maybe the director should've either gone dead serious or full on camp (ala the films of Frank Perry from the early '80s).  In many ways, the latter approach may have been advisable. 

MAY DECEMBER was inspired by the true life scandal of Mary Kay Letourneau, an elementary school teacher in Washington state who initiated sex with a twelve-year old student.  She was later sentenced and gave birth to their child in prison.  Upon release, she married the student.  Samy Burch's screenplay adds the arrival of an actress named Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) who has been cast in an upcoming movie playing the teacher, here named Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore).  By this point Gracie has been married to Joe (Charles Melton), a former classmate of one of her sons for several years.  The forbidden couple was caught having relations in the back of a pet store in the early '90s, setting off a national media train wreck.  

Elizabeth plans to study Gracie and her extended family, to discover their demons.  It is hardly news worthy that there have been plenty of repressed emotions and denial.  All great fodder for Elizabeth's upcoming performance.  As the women spend time together, it becomes clear that Gracie is not well adjusted, to say the least.  We begin to wonder if Elizabeth is not as dysfunctional, in the guise of method acting or something.

There are multiple layers to peel back in MAY DECEMBER.  Identity.  Social structure and mores.  Mental illness. Sanity.  Legacy.  So much.  The concept of statutory rape is considered soberly, a crime that was conveniently ignored by its principals.  Maybe not even recognized as such, at least by Gracie.  Until a day of reckoning inevitably comes.  Melton handles that scene believably, and his performance overall is mostly impressive, though I think many viewers are getting a wee bit carried away in praising his work.  The young actor needs more experience.   Moore and Portman are simply amazing, somehow pulling off perfect performances in the midst of incongruities, like Marcelo Blauveldt's intentionally overwrought score, with amusingly dissonant piano.  In a lesser film, these elements would not mix so well.

But I was still thrown off by Haynes' film.  It's often very funny, even when a scene is played entirely straight.  MAY DECEMBER feels like the sort of tabloid tale Elizabeth and Joe would've read about themselves.  Elevated tabloid, but still really campy at its core.  Perhaps what this story deserves.