MAY DECEMBER was an incredible film. Haynes’ decision to film in the style of an 80’s melodrama was particularly complimentary to the unsettling subject matter.
The film explores the mounting tension between three main characters: broiling menace Gracie (Julianne Moore), her reserved statutory rape victim and eventual husband Joe (Charles Melton), and the fearlessly intrusive Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) who studies Gracie before playing her in a movie. Gracie met Joe when she was 36 and he was 13. She was arrested after they were caught having sex in PetSmart where they both worked. She delivered his baby behind bars. They remained together for 24 years. That is, until Elizabeth arrived.
Portman plays Elizabeth with a silent ferocity, one that unravels alongside her curious intentions. She meddles in Gracie’s family dynamics, going beyond simply interviewing Gracie’s friends and attending every personal family event. She goes shopping with Gracie and her daughter and even attends their celebratory graduation dinner. The film doesn’t maintain tight focus on the atrocity of Gracie and Joe, it meanders on the potential evil of Elizabeth as an intruder. What does this meandering mean for the story itself? Of this, I am uncertain. The film ended with no clear intent. Are we to see Elizabeth’s obsession with her portrayal as inappropriate as Gracie’s obsession with her victim? Are we to compare the two very different wrongs of these women? Are they really very different at all? At some point, when looking at young boys auditioning to play Joe, Elizabeth tells the director over the phone something along the lines of: “Maybe it’s just LA…none of these boys are sexy.” She explains that Joe has an enticing confidence about him, and she hypothesizes that he must have been sexually alluring as a child.
Elizabeth’s goal is to “understand” Gracie well enough to play her in the film. I think Haynes wants us asking–what does this mean? How far can an actor take this? The final scene is of Elizabeth asking the director to keep filming the same scene of her talking to “Joe”. It’s clear she is completely overtaken by the story…does she usurp Gracie’s insanity? In a world so drenched in politics, it’s hard to not search for the political takeaway. I think Haynes’ intent wasn’t to create a message film, but more so create a disturbing ecosystem, both theatrical and astounding.
It didn’t feel intimate or real, and I think this was precisely the film’s strength.
Congratulations!
back home