May December (2023)
“I don’t think we have enough hot dogs”
I’ll be completely honest with you. The last thing I was expecting when I turned on May December, the latest film from acclaimed filmmaker Todd Haynes (Safe, Velvet Goldmine), was to laugh. A film loosely based on former school teacher Mary Kay Letourneau’s affair and subsequent marriage to one of her sixth grade students doesn’t seem to have an inherently comedic premise.
But the most pleasantly surprising thing about May December is just how funny it is, particularly in moments when the last thing you might be expecting is a joke. Composer Marcelo Zarvos has a way of punctuating these jokes with thriller-style strings that wouldn’t be out of place in a cut rate Lifetime movie, enhancing the comedy just that much more.
In fact, this entire film plays like the world’s best written, directed, and acted Lifetime movie ever made, and that feels totally intentional on the parts of both screenwriter Samy Burch and especially Haynes. They and their insanely talented cast lean into the more salacious and unsavory elements of the story never letting the audience forget the tabloid sensationalism of the source material.
Natalie Portman stars as Elizabeth Berry, an actress who has been cast to play the leading role in an upcoming film about a woman named Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), who began an affair with her now husband Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) when he was a seventh grader. Gracie and Joe, along with their teenage children—the oldest of whom was born while Gracie was in prison—present the picture of domestic bliss to anyone not willing to scratch just the tiniest bit beneath the surface.
Naturally, Elizabeth’s presence is the catalyst for a deeper examination of Gracie and Joe’s relationship. In fact, Gracie still subtly holds complete control over Joe’s entire existence, ensuring the now 36 year old will forever remain a seventh grader. The more time Elizabeth spends with the unabashedly unapologetic and shameless Gracie, the bolder she becomes in giving herself over to being equally unashamed. A scene where Elizabeth finds herself alone in the pet store stockroom where the affair between Gracie and Joe began is a particularly good example of this, as well as the film’s mastery of tone wherein the risible never becomes ridiculous.
Can we all just take a moment out of our lives to thank our lucky stars for Julianne Moore? She is one of the few actresses alive who can be completely chameleonic without ever changing her appearance. She looks much the same here as she does in Magnolia and Children of Men and The Kids Are All Right, but those are four wildly different performances and it’s all thanks to Moore’s incredible talent for subtlety. It’s hard for me to say this is her best performance when nearly every performance of hers could be in that discussion, but it’s top notch work from one of our best actresses.
Portman similarly manages to impress with the depths of her own carefully honed subtlety, something she’s relied on more and more in the years since her Oscar win for Black Swan. There are moments in her performance that call on her to tap into her more operatic tendencies, but for someone who has spent nearly her entire life in front of the camera, she is an actress in complete control of her instrument.
Perhaps the biggest surprise in the cast, however, is Charles Melton. Best known for playing Reggie on Riverdale, I wasn’t sure he would be able to hold his own against two of our best working actresses. However, he surprises constantly with the depth of emotion he can reach, conveying the inherent pain in a man trapped in a form of stunted adolescence. You can tell he wants more for his own life but hasn’t got the first clue how to achieve those goals.
If I have any gripe at all with May December, it’s with a subplot involving Joe’s interest in breeding butterflies. For a film that has a ton of cheeky fun with on-the-nose tropes of the aforementioned Lifetime movie genre, it’s weird that it presents this one so earnestly. For a film that has an almost preternatural contempt for sentimentality, it’s a curiously treacly note that would be right at home in an actual Lifetime movie.
That’s a minor quibble, though, particularly when every other element of the film is so expertly well done. May December may seem, on the surface, like a movie that might only appeal to those who love salacious films about indelicate subject matter. I would caution you against thinking that’s the case as the film is as disarming, funny, and biting as any film I’ve seen this year. It proves that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, but that bitter aftertaste combining the funny and the sad is where the real magic happens in this film.