Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore
“MAY DECEMBER” My rating: B (Netflix)
117 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Todd Hayne’s “May December” takes a lurid page from recent pop history and turns it into a troubling deep dive into bruised and battered psyches.
Set in moss-adorned Savannah, Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik’s screenplay centers on a visit from a Hollywood star.
Elizabeth Barry (Natalie Portman) has come to town to research a role in an upcoming film.
Specifically she’s here to interview and observe Gracie Yoo (Julianne Moore), the real-life woman she will be portraying.
When they first meet Gracie is hosting a raucus pre-graduation party for her college-bound twins and their friends. She’s obviously a perfectionist when it comes to wifely/motherly duties, but exhibits just enough world-weary Mom humor to soften her need to dominate every situation.
She appears determined to create a forced atmosphere of normalcy.
Right off the bat we notice something odd. There’s this guy, Joe (Charles Malton), about 20 years younger than Gracie who sometimes seems like a quiet servant. Is Joe her son? If so, isn’t that a rather disturbing kiss she plants on him?
What we quickly come to learn is that nearly two decades earlier Gracie and Joe were the center of a huge scandal. The then-36-year-old Gracie had an affair with seventh grader Joe. She ended up having his baby in prison; they married upon her release and now have three offspring (the oldest, born behind bars, is already in college).
And, yes, “May December” is clearly inspired by the story of the late Mary Kay Letourneau.
In a sense the film is a detective story, with Elizabeth interviewing participants in the sordid saga: Gracie’s blindsided first husband (D.W. Moffett) and emotionally burned-out adult son (Cory Michael SmithI), the pet shop owner (Charles Green) in whose storeroom the illicit lovers were found in flagrante delicto, Gracie’s supportive best friend (Joan Reilly).
Julianne Moore, Charles Melton
Outwardly, anyway, Gracie seems to have come through it all more or less intact. She claims to have “no doubts, no regrets.” She keeps busy baking cakes for friends and running her household.
But behind closed doors she is often weepy and anxiety-riddled, sobbing in the arms of Joe, who in her presence smothers his own individuality in order to give unquestioning support. Their dynamic is truly squirm-worthy.
Gracie —who is less than thrilled with Hollywood having another go at her story (some years earlier there was a tacky made-for-TV movie) — tells Elizabeth that it was 13-year-old Joe who seduced her, not the other way around.
“May December” is less interested in discovering who’s to blame than in examining the damage done. The film explores level upon level of these characters…just when you think you’ve got one of them pinned down they do something that requires a quick reassessment.
Among those under the microscope is Elizabeth herself. Ostensibly she’s our narrator/guide through this emotional minefield, but at some point we’ve got to ask if her show of friendship isn’t just another acting job. Clearly she’s determined to wring every bit of nuance out of Gracie’s story and to get there isn’t above creating collateral damage of her own.
In that regard “May December” is an indictment of show-biz duplicity and exploitation. Rarely has a film cast such a jaundiced eye on an actor’s process.
The acting is terrific. Moore and Portman, of course, are among our best film actresses.
But the film’s real discovery is Melton, a veteran of TV’s “Riverdale” (he’s also a K-State alum) whose Joe undergoes the most striking transformation. Initially he seems to have almost no personality; get him away from Gracie, though, and you find an individual trap between childhood and adulthood, struggling to come to grips with a troubled past.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 