Movie Review : May December (2023)
I'm sure most of you are old enough to remember Mary Kay Letourneau. She was an elementary school teacher who banged a twelve years old student in 1997, went to jail for it, got out seven years later and proceeded to live the happily ever after with him until her passing in 2020. They had three children together. She was an interesting cat, to say the least. Film director Todd Haynes (another interesting cat) decided to make a movie (loosely) about her. Well, it's a movie about a movie about someone like her.
If Todd Haynes' movies were too straightforward, they would lose their charm. May December is anything, but that.
May December tells the story of Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), a successful television actress tasked with playing Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), which is basically Mary Kay Letourneau, living the happily ever after with her now thirtysomething husband (Charles Melton) and her kids who are not that much younger than their old man. If it sounds fucked up, it's because it kind of is and underneath their facade of being a normal family lies an entire town who pretends now to care to their faces.
How (Not) To Talk About Uncomfortable Things
Identity has always been one of Todd Haynes' thematic obsessions. Whether it's thought having something like five different actors playing Bob Dylan in I'm Not There or deconstructing personas and transformation in glam rock in Velvet Goldmine, it's always important in his movies. May December offers kind of a new spin on this obsession: the lack of aforementioned identity. What happens when people become so defined by one event, they spend the rest of their lives disappearing behind a veil of banality.
Elizabeth travels to Savannah in order to study Gracie, but doesn't find any emotional footing to latch on to, because Gracie is actively trying to convince herself she didn't bang a twelve years old (in the movie, the kid was thirteen). It's kind of fascinating, to be honest. When someone's behavior lies on the fine line of morality, no one wants to get involved. Whether that person is just a dick at work because she's going through a mental meltdown or banging a twelve years old, our collective behavior is the same.
We make things awkward by not wanting to get involved.
This conundrum is best embodied by Elizabeth wanting to politely address the pedophilia incident with Gracie (and other townsfolk) and never getting a straight answer. Her presence is merely a source of discomfort to them because she's not pushing them into a confrontation, but she's reminding them of events they'd rather forget. To say that it is uncomfortable to watch is an understatement. It has also been called a comedy by some, but I would feel uneasy if anyone told me May December is hilarious.
But is it good?
Not really? Not in a standout way at least, but it's not bad either. It just… sort of drowns in its own hand wringing and southern politeness. Some would say that the aforementioned hand wringing and southern politeness are the point of May December, but I'd claim that you could make a much better movie about this. A lot of noise have been made about Natalie Portman's big monologue at the end, but it sort of comes out of nowhere? Elizabeth becomes Gracie all of a sudden, now that she read her letters.
I understand Todd Haynes isn't like that. That he's somewhat averse to big, dramatic moments. I also understand it's about Elizabeth becoming Gracie as much as it is about Gracie herself, but that's my point. May December never organically delivers the moments where Elizabeth "gets it". It's kind of just delivered by default at the end as if she "got it" all along. That would've also worked if she didn't spend the entire movie grasping at straws in increasingly more desperate ways.
*
I wanted to like May December, but it fell into the dead zone where I don't even really like and don't even dislike it. It just kind of happened to me. Todd Haynes has (again) interesting ideas about identity, but it's a collection of observations without a statement. Everybody will talk about how good May December is until the award season. It might even win something important. Then everyone will forget it existed in about a year. It's that type of movie. It's well crafted, kind of graceful and kind of mid.
