Review of the psychological drama “May December” by Todd Haynes

Todd Haynes’ psychological drama “May December” is released, premiering at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Inspired by a tabloid sensation thirty years ago, the authors probe the boundaries between truth in life and in art, coming to the conclusion that both exist only in the eye of the beholder. Tells Julia Shagelman.

The English idiom “May December” is most often used ironically to describe relationships between people with a large age difference. This is exactly what Grace (Julianne Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton) live in the suburbs of Savannah, Georgia. The wife is more than twenty years older than her husband, but otherwise they live a typical provincial American life: he works as an x-ray technician in a hospital, she bakes and sells homemade cakes to a circle of regular customers, the eldest daughter is in college, the younger twins, a boy and a girl , are finishing school and are also preparing to fly out of the family nest. On weekends they have barbecues in the backyard, and on major holidays they go to a restaurant that is chic by local standards, where all the visitors know each other and greet each other warmly.

However, this idyll has another side, which everyone also knows about, although it is not often talked about. Grace, a married woman of thirty-six, seduced Joe, then a thirteen-year-old schoolboy, with whom she worked in a pet store. The scandalous story was covered in the yellow press for a long time, Grace served a prison sentence, and her and Joe’s eldest daughter was born behind bars. In 2015, when the film takes place, everyone, including Grace’s ex-husband and her children from her first marriage, have somehow come to terms with unusual circumstances, and the only reminder of the past is the rare appearance of a box of crap on the porch of the perfect home of the perfect couple.

However, this past is destined to resurface when Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), an actress who became famous thanks to the popular series, but has her sights firmly set on “serious” roles, comes to town. She is going to play Grace in an independent film, which, of course, will be a real work of art, unlike the cheap TV movie hastily put together in hot pursuit twenty years ago. Elizabeth talks a lot about honesty and truth of character and, in order to achieve them on the screen, asks permission to observe the lives of Grace and Joe. Quite quickly, this observation turns into a burglary, but the subject of the investigation – Grace herself – is not as simple as it might seem at first.

Todd Haynes, a cinephile and visionary, is known for his love of melodramatic stories about forbidden love in a retro setting (“Far from Heaven”, the mini-series “Mildred Pierce”, “Carol”), although his filmography also includes deconstruction of rock myths (“Velvet Goldmine,” “I’m Not There”), and even a quite straightforward legal-environmental drama (“Dark Waters”). “May December”, according to formal criteria, seems to belong to the first category. The retro look here is completely fresh, but the imitation of shooting on film and the subtropical haze that shrouds each frame, on the one hand, create an additional distance between the audience and what is happening on the screen, and on the other hand, they cloud the view, complicating the search for the notorious “truth.” As for “forbidden love,” the authors do not look for excuses for Grace’s action and do not come up with beautiful euphemisms for it. They are not interested in making judgments, but in perceiving the situation from the inside and outside.

The film superimposes the points of view of Elizabeth, Grace, Joe, their relatives, friends and neighbors, witnesses and participants in those long-ago events. They intersect, turn in different directions, reflect and distort each other – it’s not for nothing that the visual technique with mirrors is repeated so often here. Elizabeth peers at Grace, trying her on for herself, but Grace also builds her image so carefully and meticulously that any professional actress would envy. Both women constantly play one or another role: a caring mother, a loving wife, a democratic star, condescending to mere mortals, an innocent victim, a hard worker, ready to sacrifice all of herself on the altar of art. Haynes and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Sami Birch remove their masks, peel away the many layers they’ve built up over the years, and reveal their faces. And they turn out to be quite scary.

The brilliant duet of the two actresses, together with the creators mercilessly dissecting their heroines, is balanced by the almost debutant Melton, who performs on an equal footing with them in the role of Joe, in his late thirties, who was not allowed to grow up, so in some ways he forever remained a frightened teenager. “May December” is both a clever satire on Hollywood hypocrisy and a cold-blooded analysis of the illusions into which people voluntarily immerse themselves and forcibly immerse others. But the heart of the film is in the heartbreaking story of Joe, the only one who gets the opportunity to shake off these illusions. Whether he will take advantage of it or prefer to hide in a cozy cocoon of lies, as others do, remains behind the scenes.