MAY DECEMBER – Review by Loren King
With shades of Hitchcock and Bergman’s Persona, May December keeps viewers guessing and off kilter, in a good way. Subtle, strange and riveting, Todd Haynes and his two compelling leads present a stylish mix of tabloid sensation and a psychological portrait; it’s a heady mix of irresistible but uneasy entertainment.
Natalie Portman is the actress Elizabeth who arrives in Savanah, Georgia to observe Julianne Moore’s Gracie, the woman whose lurid story she’ll be portraying in a film. Moore, reuniting with Haynes, who directed her career-defining roles in Safe and Far From Heaven, is the subject of the movie and the object of Elizabeth’s scrutiny: many years ago Gracie set off a tabloid firestorm when she went to jail for her relationship with 7th grader Joe and gave birth to their baby behind bars. But their love was “real,” Gracie asserts, and in fact she and Joe have been married ever since her release.
Joe (Charles Melton) is sweet but childlike, stuck in adolescence like the butterflies he’s nurturing to maturity and then setting free. We’re never quite sure who the actress is in this hothouse; Gracie presents a maternal, friendly, suburban homemaker front. But in private, she’s a controlling and insecure mess. The seemingly self-assured Elizabeth visits the local high school to talk about acting and gives a completely inappropriate too-much-information response to a male student’s jokey question about sex scenes. As the action progresses, Elizabeth seems to be morphing into Gracie, adopting her makeup and crossing boundaries with Joe.
Both Portman and Moore are magnetic, nuanced and gorgeous in these enigmatic and layered roles. May December is an always surprising meditation on denial and reality; a stylish seduction down a slippery slope.
