TW: Sexual Abuse
The general public has always had a strange, almost sick fascination with disturbing cases involving some form of rape, serial killers or both. In these cases, the victims usually have their trauma sensationalized and the people who commit these crimes become notorious figures through countless true crime podcasts and faux psychologists trying to delve deep into their minds. “May December” opens with actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) seeking answers by traveling to Savannah to shadow Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), a woman who made headlines two decades prior for raping then thirteen-year-old Joe (Charles Melton), whom she is now married to and has three children with. Preparing to play Gracie in a new movie, Elizabeth tries to understand Gracie’s perspective and relationship with Joe. At first, Gracie is presented to us as a typical suburban mother, while Joe seems to exist in the background. They’ve seemed to make peace with the turbulence of the scandalized tabloid relationship and have moved on.
The film is loosely inspired by the story of Mary Kay Letourneau, a middle school teacher who made international headlines in the 1990s when she was caught raping her former student Vili Fualauu, who was a mere twelve years old at the time. A storm of publicity surrounded her trial as numerous tabloids published salacious stories about the case. The inappropriate probing and hounding for anything possibly scandalous is personified in Portman’s character, as Elizabeth crosses several boundaries by intrusively inserting herself into the Atherton-Yoo family dynamic all in the name of her art.
In her own way, she’s as much of a predator as Gracie. There’s so much deliciously loaded dialogue between the two characters as both master manipulators attempt to outfox each other. Meanwhile, as the viewer attempts to get at Joe, he shrinks in on himself as much as possible. Through Elizabeth, the viewers’ own interest in the story is interrogated — we may want to know the truth, but is it right for us to want Joe to expose himself to us?
“May December” jumps all over the place, but it never feels like the film ever loses sight of what it sets out to accomplish. It manages to effortlessly jump between melodrama and serious tragedy without ever feeling jarring, something only director Todd Haynes could have pulled off. There are punctuated bursts of a cheesy Lifetime movie-esque soundtrack and interspersed shots of monarch eggs on milkweed and bright fat yellow caterpillars that feel lush with life in the midst of a household teeming with unsaid truths. The film feels so pointedly ironic at times that, despite being billed as a dark comedy, it feels impossible to laugh at any point during the film.
This is a film made by its performances. Moore is incredible as she slyly oscillates between a projected naivete that becomes more sinister as she refuses to shed it throughout the film, culminating in a shocking final scene. Portman also projects a faux sincerity as she probes into the family’s life, pretending to care about Joe while using him to get deeper into Gracie’s psyche. But Melton is the hauntingly emotional core of the film, as Joe spends the first half of the film feeling glacial, mostly mute and deferring to Gracie.
Through a slouched posture and mumbled words, Melton creates a portrait of a man-child stuck in a strange limbo between adolescence and adulthood, not quite knowing how to be any other way. It shows a visual dissonance between him and their family friends, and his father and their children as he doesn’t truly fit the roles he plays with any of them. As the film progresses, the ice cracks and Joe becomes more and more childish, showing the naivety Gracie claims to have. It’s a performance that will stick with you long after the film ends.
Despite its deceptive appearance of complexity, “May December” is clear about who is the victim and who is the abuser the entire time. The film’s simple framing of a situation of an older woman grooming and abusing a young boy is refreshing in a culture that, for years, had framed situations like this as something beneficial for the victim in question. Countless pieces of media, such as “Dawson’s Creek,” “Riverdale” and more, have romanticized relationships between adult women and teenage boys, presenting harmful messages about masculinity to their young audiences. “May December” offers an opportunity for us to unpack that harmful internalized message and perhaps create a new dialogue.
Verdict: ‘May December’ is a stunningly realized melodrama about the nature of abusers and the lies they tell themselves and others, supported by strong performances and unique directing.
