Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) is off to suburban Georgia, to study Gracie (Julianne Moore), who she will be playing in an upcoming movie based on her life. Gracie had an affair with a 13-year-old boy when she was 36, and after a very public ordeal of national infamy, the pair still remained together, raising three children, with the two youngest about to celebrate their high school graduation. To Elizabeth’s surprise, the couple, through a nefarious beginning, have seemingly come through happily-ever-after on the other side, but while husband Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) starts to question his life, Elizabeth finds the entire situation too fascinating to leave.
I found this movie very interesting on a technical level. As the plot gets going, it’s suspicious score and ‘70s aesthetics set the mood on how we should be perceiving casual greetings. I just wrote about movies appearing as if they’re from another decade in my review for The Holdovers, and May December is attempting the exact same thing again; although, I think it works better in The Holdovers, and movies like Last Night in Soho, because those stories actually take place in the corresponding time periods, whereas May December utilises mobile phones and other technologies, placing it in the modern day, which is incongruent with the nostalgic style. Here, I think director Todd Haynes is just using the filmic aesthetic to communicate a tone – that ‘70s fatalism – more than he is using it to enhance the story, which is probably unnecessary, and a modern thriller would’ve been just fine.
I also think the movie is deliberately ugly – I kept asking myself, “why is that framing selected?” “Why is the movie holding that shot, and not showing the other person’s face?” Through this, it does reinforce a feeling in the story that something is off, only every now and then, and I never felt like the movie didn’t know what it was doing. May December also contains a couple lines of dialogue that are winky, indicating that I should trust the movie is in complete control, and I did. Perhaps through the credit fonts, the aesthetic, and the close-up transitional shots of plants and caterpillars, I got a vibe that reminded me of 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which I decided was fitting since Elizabeth was here to embody Gracie after all – but I think, what ends up being more obvious, is a symbology between Joe raising butterflies, his own yearning for transformation through the story, and his relationship with his own children. Although the movie bills itself as a battle of the minds between Elizabeth and Gracie, Joe is given a lot of room to contemplate, and I think Charles Melton gives a really magnetic performance. Joe is stunted, dominated, withdrawn within himself. And he’s experiencing an inner desire to grow, which is hammered in by Melton’s considered movement. In the end, what do you reckon if I write it’s Gracie who’s the true bug catcher? The way she passively controls her children, and Joe, and freaks when a customer gets away by canceling their orders 😮
Yet, when all is said and done, I was hoping for a bit more grip in the ending. I thought we may’ve gotten more discourse in the ways that Elizabeth is phony as well – she’s clearly having issues with her fiancé, and she may be sleeping with her director, and what is it that draws her to playing these characters, underneath the intellectual examination? I guess there’s subtlety in the ending, in that Elizabeth never figured out her subject – Gracie won the battle of wills, and kept her inner machinations private. I think the problem is that the audience saw more quiet moments with Gracie, alone and with her husband, than Elizabeth did, so it doesn’t really land for us – Elizabeth is our conduit into this world, somewhat, but at some point, we part ways, and so when Elizabeth is confused by what she thinks she knows at the end, I don’t think we share in that confusion with her. I thought Elizabeth had figured out that Gracie was a liar, since Gracie told Elizabeth that Joe had slept with many girls before her, while Joe indicated prior that he hadn’t, and the secret letter all but confirmed that Gracie seduced Joe. So, when Gracie throws Elizabeth off course by reiterating that she and her son Georgie (Cory Micheal Smith) speak every day, she’s probably lying; and, if not, the breadth of her domineering nature is only more obvious. Perhaps I’m wrong, in my interpretation of the final scene, that shows Elizabeth struggling to inhabit the character to a personal point of obsession, but it’s certainly what I took from it, and pretty strongly too.
A few more little nitpicks – Gracie and Joe’s eldest daughter Honor (Piper Curda) comes out of nowhere with a disruptive angst; not like Georgie, who is set up as a potential antagonist, and wakes you up at his first presence. So what’s Honor’s story? When did she start resenting her parents? 🤔 I also felt Gracie’s slight lisp steps up a notch while Joe and Gracie are fighting at the end, which was distracting – I state this sadly too, because I found so many of the superficial quirks to be perfect, across the movie, so for that to ruin the mood in a pivotal scene was annoying. I also would’ve liked to have known how the movie within the movie came to be – had this unusual couple sold the rights to their life? Did they have a say in it at all? How much is it seen as a burden or a chance to explain themselves every time the media gets involved?
For a movie that is mostly contemplative and talky, I’m sure it can be hard to land the final blow, but it’s just disappointing when I was finding May December to be an intensely satisfying drama for the longest time, before it just falls short. The movie is actually most charismatic when Portman is on the screen, while Moore is the most intriguing, and Joe does the most interesting stuff on the sides – it’s equally his movie, from a certain point of view, even though they couldn’t find a place for him on the poster ☹ Whilst I was really invested for the majority of this movie, I could describe May December as a plastic jug right now, filled to the brim but with a hole in the bottom, and the more I keep thinking about it, my enthusiasm drains out of the movie like water. I better rate it quickly before it’s empty. 3.5
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