Summary
There’s nothing comedic about May December despite it being billed as such. It’s a tragic tale about lies, abuse, and neverending dysfunction.
Todd Haynes’s most recent film, May December, has caused quite a stir among critics since premiering at the 76th Cannes Film Festival. The film has since screened in the festival circuit and earned a few awards before it received a limited theatrical release followed by a more permanent home on Netflix.
May December examines a type of scandal we’ve seen all too often in the tabloid press and as a trope in more films and TV series than we’d care to count. The film is loosely inspired by the real-life case of Mary Kay Letourneau, a teacher who did the unthinkable with one of her 13-year-old students.
May December review and plot summary
In the early 90s, Gracie (Julianne Moore) became a tabloid sensation for grooming Joe (Charles Melton), her 13-year-old pet store coworker, and having his baby while incarcerated. More than two decades later, Gracie and Joe are married, and their two younger kids, Mary (Elizabeth Yu) and Charlie (Gabriel Chung), are about to graduate high school.
The family still lives in the small town of Savannah, Georgia, a community that would rather forget they were there. While Gracie would like to think of herself as a pillar of the community, the family still receives regular parcels containing literal feces.
Natalie Portman plays Elizabeth Berry, an actress cast to portray Gracie in an upcoming indie flick about the sordid affair. As she spends time following Gracie around, Elizabeth gets to hear from Gracie who’s still adamant she did nothing wrong all those years ago.
Julianne Moore is excellent as the morally ambiguous groomer. As much as Gracie likes to portray herself as a loving mother and housewife, snippets of the manipulative woman capable of child sexual abuse keep appearing throughout the movie.
As part of her research, Elizabeth tries getting to know Joe, who’s a bit dazed and confused about the life he’s been living with a woman 23 years his senior who treats him as one would a son. Elizabeth’s presence is the catalyst for him to finally start questioning what happened all those years ago.
RELATED: Where was May December filmed?
Charles Melton offers a raw and painful portrayal of a man in his 30s with arrested development who’s just beginning to realize how much he lost because he was groomed into becoming a husband and father before he even graduated high school. Joe doesn’t act like you would expect a 36-year-old adult to and Gracie never treats him like a partner. The scenes where he interacts with his children as if they’re all siblings are particularly compelling.
We also hear from Gracie’s ex-husband, who up until his wife’s arrest didn’t think there were any problems in his marriage. She meets Georgie, Gracie’s son, whose entire existence is upended by his mother’s actions.
Portman’s character is, in part, a stand-in for the audience, but her motivations are never clear. She digs into these people’s lives as she tries to understand the type of person Gracie is so she can become her.
May December is a disturbing character study
This is a well-put-together and very uncomfortable-to-watch movie. It’s a subtle character study that is ultimately about the stories we tell ourselves to go to sleep at night. Elizabeth handles the many dysfunctions in her own life by throwing herself into her work. Her interest in her subject remains ambiguous, and viewers are forced to question her motivations up until the end of the credits.
Gracie could never honestly face the reality of what she’s done, she portrays the image of a somewhat naive and unapologetic woman because the alternative is too much to bear.
And Joe has lost so much of himself at the hands of someone he’s spent two decades sleeping next to. It’s impossible to know if he’ll ever be able to start picking up the pieces of his shattered childhood.
What did you think of May December? Comment below.
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