Review: May December

Director: Todd Haynes

Stars: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton

“I don’t know if we’re connecting or creating bad memories” whimpers confused 36-year-old Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), high as a kite having shared his first joint with teenage son Charlie (Gabriel Chung). It’s a line indicative of much of the dialogue of May December, which frequently has the taste of bitter caramel, served up delectably by its stable of fine actors. Such exchanges are germinated when steely TV actor Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) pays a visit to Joe and his much-older wife Gracie (Julianne Moore) in preparation for her new movie based on their scandalous love life.

At some point in the early ’90s (pinning down dates is made exceedingly slippery here), Gracie was caught having sex with Joe in the stockroom of a pet store. The two of them were wildly in love… but Joe was in the seventh grade. Since then – in spite of tabloid frenzies, Gracie’s incarceration and literal shit in the mail – the two have remained together and raised a family. The local community just about tolerates them, and their lives seem held together by a tacit agreement to just forget the past. Enter Elizabeth with her notebook and questions…

Todd Haynes has played lavishly in the arena of melodrama before (Far from Heaven, Carol), but rarely with such deliberately interjected cattiness as exhibited here. However, having said that, it isn’t glaringly overcooked either. Not quite the saucy zingers of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? or anything from the Paul Verhoeven oeuvre. May December plays more in the realm of barbed microaggressions. Gracie is naturally wary of Elizabeth’s presence and what it might disturb. It seems laughably pointed that her hobby is hunting – a literal predator – and her shotgun inserts some overt Chekhovian tension. But Moore plays the woman as naive, babyish. But how much of this is her own performance?

Performance naturally becomes a meaty issue throughout. We know so little about either of these women. Uncovering their true selves is like the patient work of an archaeologist brushing aside the dirt. Gracie’s veneer of domestic bliss seems increasingly predicated on the good graces of a handful of locals and when this facade drops the resulting outbursts are predictably shattering (Moore is so good at falling apart).

Elizabeth, meanwhile, becomes an even juicier conundrum. Her interest in the role becomes darkly problematic, from a scene in which she grows inappropriately rapturous describing simulated sex scenes to a high school class to her feedback comments on prospective 13-year-old co-stars. An early apex of her latent dysfunctionality occurs on visiting the pet store where the infamous ‘crime’ was committed. Meanwhile, one of the movie’s cruellest jokes about Elizabeth’s capability is saved ’til the very end. Portman, for her part, is as good as she’s ever been. Another great performance in a career defined by them.

Haynes is ever the chameleon, adapting sensibilities to the material in question. Unlike some auteurs, he doesn’t necessarily carry an inner circle of creatives from project-to-project (though Moore obviously connects back to his ’90s career-maker Safe and later Far from Heaven). Still, frequent DP Ed Lachman sits this one out (thanks to a broken femur). Working with Kelly Reichardt’s regular cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt for the first time, May December favours her fondness for earthen tones and natural light (or lack thereof; corners of frames are often gloomy, dark smudges). It’s a calming, grounding counterpoint to the glossiness of Alex Mechanik and Samy Burch’s impeccable screenplay.

One of the canny wonders of May December is how it plays both outrageously and coyly; extroverted in its broad sense of dark perversity, introverted in its ability to wrong-foot the viewer and refuse easy answers. Portman and Moore convey this inscrutability, but their tightrope walk – balanced by Haynes – goes back to that wickedly calibrated script.

There’s an undeniable heritage here in the batty erotic thrillers of the ’80s and ’90s, from the leafy island setting (redolent of Gracie’s dreamy detachment) with its docks and touristy restaurants, to the overt – even clunky – symbolism of Joe’s tenderly nurtured chrysalises that promise radiant transformation. Yet the impulse to make such connections is undercut by the queasiness of the subject matter. If there’s a performance here liable to be under-appreciated as awards season approaches, its Melton’s teetering, tragic turn as Joe, a man in arrested development very much experiencing a delayed adolescence triggered by Elizabeth. Through this we come to understand the experiences that were robbed of him by his involvement with Gracie. Her malevolence is revealed through him and reflected in the copycat actions of Elizabeth’s predatory imitation.

This is a quixotic mix of delicious high drama and serious study of our obsession with trivialising trauma through tabloid reductivism. Haynes never forgets the emotional complexity beneath the movie’s oft-comedic beats. Between this, David Fincher’s The Killer and (to a lesser extent) Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, it feels like we’re entering a new era of prestige trash, and I for one am here for it.