Haynes Code
Can you truly mine camp and nuanced character study from tabloid sensation? If you’re Todd Haynes you most definitely can.
May December
Director: Todd Haynes • Writer: Samy Burch
Starring: Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Charles Melton, Cory Michael Smith
USA • 1hr 57mins
Opens Hong Kong December 14 • III
Grade: B+
Evidently Hong Kong’s ratings board is more hung up on the male genitalia in May December than director Todd Haynes, co-star Charles Melton (not the Australian winemaker) or even the MPAA is (this is an R, not a dreaded NC-17), because it took it upon itself to excise a brief glimpse of Melton’s junk – and still slapped it with a Cat III. Okay. Whatever. But luckily the flash of live flesh – standard in Haynes films, and god help anyone unprepared for the flopping balls of the luscious Velvet Goldmine – or lack thereof doesn’t really have much of an impact on the story at the heart of May December. Haynes’ latest team-up with his favourite muse, Julianne Moore, is a deeply, deeply, awkward and upsetting dark comedy-drama about self-absorbed thespian – not actor, thespian – Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) shadowing a former teacher and ex-con, Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Moore), who did time after she was caught having sex with her 13-year-old student. She was 36.
May December is textbook Haynes: cool, impeccably styled, subversive in its central conflict and demanding of the viewer. He puts us on the spot, the way he did in Safe, Carol, and Far From Heaven, and leaves us to wrestle with ambiguity when all is said and done. But in between the misleadingly normal opening sequences and the final moments, we’re treated to fabulously suspicious best frenemies relationship, gorgeously realised by Moore and Portman. Do not get in their way.
Mirror, mirror
Haynes has credited Ingmar Bergman’s Persona as among the inspirations for May December, easy to see in that film’s story of two women slowly melding into each other. But first-time writer (!) Samy Burch, based the screenplay loosely on the 1996 tabloid scandal involving Washington teacher Mary Katherine Schmitz and her 12-year-old student. Here, it’s 23 years since teacher and middle schooler hooked up, and now-married Gracie and Joe Yoo (Riverdale’s Melton, possessor of the offensive cojones) are living in inherently decadent Savannah, Georgia with their children: twins Mary and Charlie (Elizabeth Yu and Gabriel Chung) and a daughter at university, Honor (Piper Curda) – who was born in the clink. Elizabeth arrives to do research on Grace ahead of a film she’ll be playing her in. Elizabeth is our gateway to Gracie’s not-really-so scandalous life. She and Joe are a happy couple, her first husband Tom (DW Moffett) and their son and Joe’s one-time classmate Georgie (Cory Michael Smith) are dealing. Yeah, sure, Gracie’s a registered sex offender but Joe insists there was no rape. The neighbours seem to be fine with the Yoos.
But as Elizabeth starts to scratch the surface her nosing around opens wounds Joe didn’t know were there, and prompts Gracie to retreat to the safety of the bad behaviour that put her where she is. And here’s where Burch – whose second film, Coyote vs. Acme is at the heart of Warner’s latest anti-artist clusterfuck – and Haynes start to act up. Sure, Gracie has issues to say the least, but Elizabeth matches her on the self-serving manipulation front. As the two women circle each other, and as Gracie makes Elizabeth over into a version of her, the tension never gets above simmer, but man is it thick. Burch nails the muddle of who’s judging who, how Elizabeth and Gracie push each other’s buttons, blurring the lines between right, wrong, safe, uncomfortable into near oblivion. Christopher Blauvelt’s (First Cow) elegant cinematography gives the whole thing a sheen of suburban propriety, with scads of impeccable spaces and reflective surfaces within and against which the characters can allow their personal transformations to play out.
If you’re a sucker for Haynes’ brand of suburbia-skewering melodrama, which is always chock full of cringey and/or razor sharp campiness laid over a layer of astute observation of human nature, May December is a must-see. Very few filmmakers can balance the maudlin, the ironic, the romantic and the somehow wrong as well as Haynes. It takes a deft hand to make a movie that’s essentially about grooming and sexual assault into a complex study of power and ambition, and the people caught under their wheels. Surprising to absolutely no one, Moore is fantastic as the enigmatic Gracie, playing her cards so close to the chest it’s impossible to get a handle on who she is. Which is kind of the point, seeing as Berry’s “research” comes to almost nothing. She can’t figure her out, and the often overrated Portman has rarely been this interesting on screen. Asshole looks good on her. But it’s Melton that quietly sneaks in and steals the movie from both of them. No mean feat. Joe is probably May December’s most guileless and legitimately questioning character, re-evaluating his place and who he is, and comes closest to being the film’s most sympathetic. Melton (seriously, Riverdale) makes Joe’s slow awakening to his ongoing adolescence partially heartbreaking and partially empowering, and entirely deserving of the Oscar nomination he better goddamned get. — DEK