4/5 stars
No contemporary film director seems to understand the dark heart rotting at the centre of suburban American life quite like Todd Haynes. His newest feature, May December, is a slippery and deceptive yarn which finds its drive in a decades-old tabloid scandal. The plot centres around Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), a Julliard-educated actress looking for a challenging role that will take her beyond the moderate success she has found starring in a medical drama for network television. She sets her sights on Gracie (Julianne Moore), a middle-aged woman living comfortably in Savannah, Georgia alongside her much younger husband Joe (Charles Melton). The pair were embroiled in a public affair that took place during her first marriage when Joe was just thirteen years old. Hoping to do some research before she is set to play her in an upcoming film about the scandal, the film takes place over the week or so in which Elizabeth temporarily moves into Gracie and her family’s seemingly idyllic community.
As always, Haynes weaves an incisive web of cinematic references which help contextualise the film. The melodramas of Douglas Sirk are a persistent influence, evident through the cinematography’s focus on picturesque suburban exteriors and the emotional depravity which they conceal. Offsetting the charming idiosyncrasies of the small-town residential setting is Marcello Zarvos’ stately and impassioned score – a slanted recreation of Michel Legrand’s for The Go-Between – which imbues the banal everyday rituals of baking and shopping with a pervasive sense of underlying dread. As surfaces are pulled back through these mechanisms, an intense battle of wills ensues between the female leads as Elizabeth becomes uncomfortably enmeshed in the life and identity of Gracie. Bergman’s 1966 film Persona becomes clear as the most literal point of reference here through a motif of mirror shots which position both actresses as staring directly into the camera at different points. Furthermore, there is a brief swimming pool shot which recalls 3 Women, Robert Altman’s own tale of fluid female identity.
Inspiration aside, the film’s success hinges upon the captivating performances turned in by Portman, Moore, and Melton. Each one works deftly with Samy Burch’s tightly wound script to unveil the layers of their characters slowly, forging their true intentions ultimately ambiguous. Portman plays Elizabeth with a malevolent insincerity that makes her character’s sparse backstory feel like a choice rather than an omission. She provides the perfect foil to Moore’s faux naivety as Gracie and resultingly calls into question the ethics of this kind of parasitic research. Melton, arguably the only truly sympathetic of the three, is both heartbreaking and disturbing as the neutered and emotionally stunted Joe. Lending him a lived-in sense of deeply rooted inner turmoil that the character himself seems just to be beginning to process.
Despite the heightened dramatic pitch of most the narrative, its weaker moments arrive when characters’ emotions are rendered slightly too opaque to be truly engaging. In a shot towards the end of the film in which Gracie hunts a fox the morning after a pivotal fight scene with Joe, the booming score and probing close-up communicate the significance of this moment, but the audience is left with few narrative clues as to what this might be. In keeping with this, there are a number of missed opportunities to dial up the prevailing tone of camp intensity, but the film instead feels too concerned with adhering to the stereotypical markers of the well-behaved Hollywood drama. Still, May December remains a deliciously overwrought tale of voyeurism and dysfunction that is undoubtedly enjoyable.
[By Fergus Kane, he/him]
Instagram: @fergus_kane
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