In the experimental montage that opens “Persona,” a bare-chested teenage boy caresses a display screen upon which the faces of two girls slowly morph backwards and forwards. It’s simple to think about Todd Haynes being tempted to start out his deep-as-you-want-to-go rabbit-hole drama “May December” the identical manner, seeing as how this endlessly fascinating film focuses on the blurring of the strains between a Hollywood star (Natalie Portman) and her true-crime character (Julianne Moore), who was caught in a sexual relationship with a seventh grader on the age of 36. The film desires to know: Can enjoying this Mary Kay Letourneau-like tabloid sensation actually reply what makes such a girl tick?
A heady director whose whole oeuvre feels ripe for film-studies dissertations, Haynes makes films not merely to be watched, however to be analyzed and deconstructed after the actual fact. From the wealthy Douglas Sirkian pastiche of “Far From Heaven” to the queer twist on classical “woman’s pictures” supplied by “Carol,” his model might be chilly and distancing. Not so “May December.” As layered and infinitely open-to-interpretation as any of his movies, it’s additionally probably the most beneficiant and direct, starting not with Ingmar Bergman references (these come later), however with footage of monarch butterflies. They’re symbols of transformation, too, but additionally one thing good to have a look at (and hearken to, underscored by a lush transforming of the piano theme from “The Go-Between”) earlier than these two girls meet.
As Gracie Atherton-Yoo, Moore performs a girl with a Teflon conscience who, even after greater than 20 years, remains to be deflecting public criticism. It didn’t assist that there was a crappy TV film made in regards to the scandal on the time, which Haynes amusingly samples at one level. Now a grandmother (by her first marriage), Gracie hopes {that a} new indie movie will carry some nuance to her story — which doesn’t appear particularly possible, if Netflix’s “The Staircase” and different examples are to be thought-about. But she’s hardly the primary to have optimistically accepted such a suggestion.
Gracie welcomes Portman’s Elizabeth Berry, star of a preferred TV sequence known as “Norah’s Ark,” into the Savannah dwelling she shares with Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), the much-younger “May” to this lady’s “December.” Joe was simply 13 once they fell in love. They have been caught in flagrante delicto within the stockroom of the Georgia pet store the place Gracie and Joe each labored. A media circus adopted, and their child was “born behind bars,” because the gossip rags put it.
Haynes and screenwriter Samy Burch current that backstory in items, permitting audiences to type their first impressions of Gracie earlier than discovering her crime. Tone is all the pieces in films like this, and Haynes goes out of his technique to keep away from the sensationalism that made “To Die For” or “Cry-Baby” so delectably campy. One of Gracie and Joe’s survival methods — what Joan Didion known as the tales “we tell ourselves … in order to live” — is to insist that they’re nonetheless in love, though non-public scenes discover him texting flirtatiously with another person. There’s clearly extra to this relationship than meets the attention, and Elizabeth can solely uncover a lot of it within the handful of days she’s organized to watch the Yoo household.
As Elizabeth goes about her analysis, making an attempt to get into Gracie’s pores and skin by interviewing her ex-husband and those that know her finest, what follows isn’t merely a charming deconstruction of an actor’s course of. It’s an intensive dive into the psychology of everybody concerned, not least of all the lady who’d be drawn to play such a job. “It’s the complexity, the moral gray areas, that are so interesting,” Elizabeth tells a highschool performing class, considerably alarmingly oblivious to her viewers. Laying clues that may repay later, she discusses the nuances of filming intercourse scenes to those immature teenagers, and doesn’t adapt her description of Gracie to the actual fact her daughter sits among the many college students. The identical age hole separates Gracie from Elizabeth that existed between the lady and her sufferer. Will she actually be capable to do that lady’s story justice?
“May December” operates on many ranges without delay, permitting audiences to invest as to Gracie’s motivations (the explanation we’re drawn to films just like the one being made about her) at the same time as we watch Elizabeth “become” her character. At night time, she goes again to the native dwelling she’s renting — “quaint,” by her description, posh by anybody else’s — and watches video auditions with the underage actors who could possibly be her co-star, remarking that they’re “not sexy enough.” Her interactions with the real-life Joe change into more and more flirtatious, to the purpose one can’t assist however ponder whether Elizabeth feels she must seduce him in an effort to perceive Gracie.
On a meta degree, Moore can also be an actor enjoying a girl discovered responsible of corrupting a minor, which raises intriguing questions on actuality and illustration (à la “Kate Plays Christine”). Withholding ethical judgment as finest he can, Haynes retains issues extra emotional than mental, trusting audiences to try this unpacking on their very own. Though Portman has the extra conceptual function right here, Moore should set a benchmark for believability because the “real” Gracie: a girl who describes herself as “naive,” however is closely invested in how she is going to finally be portrayed — and slyly manipulative in getting her manner (watch how she influences her daughter’s alternative of commencement costume).
“May December” suggests a fictional model of final yr’s where-are-they-now documentary “Subject,” about the way in which public consideration can change the lives of these featured in films, not all the time for the higher. The extra attention-grabbing transformation right here happens inside Elizabeth, because the actor makes an attempt to search out her interior Gracie. At one level, Haynes positions Portman and Moore in entrance of a mirror as Gracie goes by way of the motions of making use of her personal make-up. Midway by way of the scene, they flip from staring straight out into the viewers to seeing themselves mirrored in each other’s eyes. Whatever intimacy these two girls set up, Elizabeth isn’t occupied with defending Gracie a lot as she is in arriving on the “truth” of her motivations. That’s the ineffable ideally suited of artwork, and one that’s inevitably restricted by the space between an actor and her topic.