MAY DECEMBER – Review

Director Todd Haynes re-teams with Julianne Moore, star of his Douglas Sirk-style melodrama FAR FROM HEAVEN, for another soapy melodrama (complete with emotionally-overwrought score) for Haynes’ new MAY DECEMBER. The story was apparently inspired by the 1990s Mary Kay LeTourneau case, a tabloid scandal about a married, 36-year-old teacher who was convicted of raping her 12-year-old male student, a crime for which she went to jail and where she gave birth in prison. The pair had another child and eventually married when the boy reach adulthood although they divorced years later.

It is a tabloid tale that seems made for Todd Haynes. However, while the couple in the movie have a somewhat similar history, the movie’s story takes place twenty years after the infamous events, when the still-married couple are living a comfortable, quiet suburban life in a small island town near Savannah, Georgia. Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton) are well-liked in the community which seems to have forgotten all about the scandal.

As the couple’s two younger children, boy and girl twins, are preparing for high school graduation, their quiet lives are interrupted by the arrival of a famous actress Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) who is there to research her role as Gracie in an upcoming movie about their infamous past. Hoping the film will put them in the best possible light, Gracie and Joe welcome Elizabeth into their home.

While Gracie is gracious and Elizabeth is polite, the two women have differing agendas: Gracie to keep the perfect surface her family presents to the world intact while Elizabeth gently tries to pry open any secrets hidden there. You know there must be some, which sets off a tense tango of conflicting purposes between the two women.

While some have called MAY DECEMBER a comedy, the overall tone of the film is tension and mystery, as the melodrama unfolds. As Elizabeth looks for ways to gain insights on the real Gracie and hidden details of the past, Gracie spackles over any cracks in the flawless facade they couple present to all.

There are plenty of hints of secrets and juicy tidbits but MAY DECEMBER actually promises more than it delivers on that end. What is does deliver, however, is a nice femme-centric battle of wills story. MAY DECEMBER sets up a tense pas-de-deux duel between these dual female leads, played brilliantly by Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, in this femme-centric story.

The duel between the two women has Portman and Moore playing off each other in a cat-and-mouse dance that is the film’s chief delight, particularly for those who are less enamored by Haynes’ overblown stylistic flourishes.

Still, fans of Todd Haynes’s films will find lots to please them, with dramatic twists (although what is revealed is no surprise) and swelling music to accompany them, and plenty of gossipy details in supporting characters, like Gracie’s ex-husband and children from her previous marriage, and particularly her troubled grown son. Repeatedly we are reminded that the actress Elizabeth, who will play the young Gracie, is closer in age to Joe now, as are Gracie’s grown children, and at times, Joe seems more like one of the kids as well. Gracie is by turns steely and in control, and little-girlish, particularly with Joe. Joe is opaque at first, a rock of reliability and maturity, but as Elizabeth searches for ways around Gracie’s walls, cracks in his front show up.

Not surprisingly, the film’s best scenes are between Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, as they maintain a polite surface relationship while jockeying for position and advantage to achieve their own goals. Scenes reveal neither woman to be as nice as they want people to believe, to be cunning players in this game, and in some ways more alike than either wants to think they are. Portman in particular shines in her role, showing a darker side as the complex Elizabeth than we usually see. Both characters are capable of a certain ruthlessness to get what they want, which gives their scenes together a special chill.

MAY DECEMBER serves up a Todd Haynes soapy treat for his fans, and a wonderful acting pas-de-deux between Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore.

MAY DECEMBER opens Friday, Nov. 17, in theaters.

RATING: 2 out of 4 stars