Directed by Todd Haynes. Written by Sammy Burch.
The horrible truth, the imagined truth, the skewed truth and “the truth” becomes impossible to separate in Todd Haynes’ May December, a two-hour source of discomfort that is icky, icky, icky.
Back in the 90s, Gracie (Julianna Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton) sent tabloids into a frenzy when Gracie cheated on her husband, began a new life with Joe, and had his baby in prison. Joe was 13. Now, they’re making a movie about the sordid affair, and Elizabeth, who’s to play Gracie, asks to spend a few days with them. They’re (understandably) cagey about letting Elizabeth in, but she tells them it’s with the “truth” in mind she wants to get to know them. To tell an honest and earnest account that looks beyond the grimy headlines.
She arrives as their two youngest children, twins, are set to graduate high school and leave the nest. Joe is now 36. A father of three, yet Gracie employs the soft nagging mannerism of a matriarch to control him.
Elizabeth’s arrival brings about a confrontation for everyone involved, and May December is a psychological drama that unfolds with the power of a groundswell, rumbling along until everything threatens to fall apart under the strain of unearthed feelings decades in the making. It’s an uncomfortable experience watching the icy threesome that develops as Elizabeth insinuates herself more and more, and outside the home, we get a dose of hard-hitting reality, as Elizabeth interviews people in Gracie and Joe’s orbit, turning over the radioactive soil. Prepare for squirm-inducing encounters.
Haynes is a master of melodrama, and May December doesn’t stray far from his wheelhouse, but there’s a sinister edge to this manipulative affair. A story of monsters and the meek, Charles Melton delivers a wonderful performance as Joe, a victim working hard to both catch up to and deal with the trauma his life has been. Julianne Moore is a dragon lady as Gracie whose true nature is woven right into the film’s mystery. Natalie Portman completes the triangle as the outsider, who has her own cynical slant. There’s not a scene without at least one of them in it, and that alone is enough to make May December a good movie.
Portman in particular delivers both an outstanding performance and an outstanding meta-performance, shadowboxing with Moore’s work. The interplay between them is headed straight for acting class syllabuses to be studied, aped, but never matched.
What makes May December more than just a good movie is the ice bath Haynes’ draws up and slowly pushes you into, struggle as you might with your arms on the bathtub’s edges. There’s so much to sift through and parse over, only you’re not really sure you want to for fear of what you might uncover.
A cursed relationship of grooming, a society’s exploitative hunger for sensationalism, one ruined family, and another in the making. A devastating suggestion that precious few can be trusted with our true selves. It’s all here, in a damningly cynical whirlwind of a story that leaves you in need of a drink and some quiet far away to think it all over.
Mikkel Frederiksen 