OSCARS 2024: May December (2023)

Todd Haynes occupies a rare place in our modern film landscape. He has, over the years, still held onto the indie darling reputation he earned in the nineties, after provocative motion pictures like "Poison" and "Safe." Yet Haynes' respectability is such that he's slowly worked his way into the critical mainstream. He would receive his first Oscar nomination in 2002 for "Far from Heaven." Subsequent films, like "I'm Not There" and "Carol," would also earn nominations. Despite this attention from the AMPAS, Haynes has held onto the psychological intimacy that first got people's attention. In other words: He's gotten Oscar buzz without ever selling out and making some baiting biopic. This trend continued with "May December." Despite being one of the best reviewed films of last year, it apparently rubbed Academy voters that wrong way, only grabbing one nomination for its screenplay. This, of course, only made Haynes cooler in the eyes of cinephiles worldwide and made the movie the scrappy, underappreciated gem of this year's Oscar slate.

Two decades ago, grown woman Gracie Atherton was caught having sex with 13 year old Joe Yoo in the storage room of the pet store they both worked at. The story became a tabloid sensation, especially after Gracie and Joe stayed together through her jail time. They eventually married and had three kids. Now, Hollywood actress Elizabeth Berry has arrived at Gracie and Joe's home, in order to study them for a film in which she's playing Gracie. On the already stressful eve of their oldest child's high school graduation, Elizabeth's presence begins to throw off the unsteady balance of the household. 

"May December" is, of course, inspired by the real life story of Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau. After the film's release, Fualaau would say some unkind things to the press about how he didn't appreciate his life being adapted into a film without his consultation. This was an ironic complaint, as "May December" is clearly about the unsteady ethics of adapting a real life event into entertainment meant to be consumed by a mass audience. The deeper involved in the couple's life Elizabeth gets, the more deluded she seemingly becomes. She asks the casting director to find a "sexier" teenage boy to play Joe in the movie, seemingly unaware of how wrong that statement sounds. She lounges erotically in the real life storage room where the couple was caught. It's clear that her actions – mining the factual complications and tragedies of a real person to gain herself glory – are being criticized by the film. In the last act, perhaps the movie's most powerful moment, Joe shouts out her about how his "story" isn't a fictional tale meant to titlilate or fascinate. It's his life. It actually happened to him. The final, darkly funny scene makes it clear that Elizabeth's goals are the misplaced ambitions of a conceited artist-type who has lost sight of the consequences of her actions. No wonder "May December" was largely dismissed by the Oscars. The movie is directly criticizing the system and attitudes that sees movie stars play-acting through real life tragedy, all in the name of masturbatory glory chasing. 

Yet "May December" isn't just a self-reflective critique of Hollywood chewing up real life events and spitting out tawdry melodrama. It's also a slow-burning thriller, thrusting us into the complicated dynamic between an unbalanced couple. When we first meet Gracie, she seems blissfully unaware of the gravity of her own actions. She acts like the circumstances of her and Joe's relationship is a sweet story, a meet-cute out of a movie. She lets the clear discomfort that exists with her kids from her first marriage slide off her back. Is this woman really so vapid that she can't see the clear moral boundaries she transgressed? There is an evident awkwardness in every interaction Gracie has, with her husband and anyone she meets from the outside world. The implications of her actions float over everything she does and say, made all the more tense by her refusal to acknowledge them. The film also introduced the possibilities that she is mentally unwell. This is what the scenes where she has crying fits around Joe suggests. 

Or is it all a conniving manipulation? As "May December" moves towards its last act, it's made increasingly clear that Gracie is a far more sinister figure than her outward appearance suggests. The word "groomer" has been so misused by right-wing agitators, in order to criminalize ordinary behavior they object to, that it's all but lost its meaning. Yet grooming, an adult psychologically manipulating a child into a sexual relationship, is a very clear set of actions. As Joe sees his own children, older now than he was when he first met Gracie, have totally normal experiences that he never got to live through, the dynamic starts to shake up. Gracie begins to repeat clearly calculated actions, reminding him that they had agreed that Joe - a thirteen year old boy - had seduced her. Haynes tops this off with some all-too clear visual symbolism, of a fox caught in a trap. Yet the script is complex enough to not make Gracie simply a plotting villain. It's suggested she might be repeating traumatic events she herself lives through. That the movie paints this woman as a possibly sympathetic figure without downplaying the awfulness of her own actions proves what a delicate balancing act it pulls off. 

Haynes isn't just a keen observer of human behavior. He's also a master stylist with a precise visual eye. "May December" has been referred to as "camp" by a lot of people, the Foreign Press Association even going so far as to nominate it for "Best Comedy or Musical." This is probably because of a score that blares melodramatically through several scenes, calling attention to the discomfort of the whole situation. Some people are going to laugh at that kind of thing and I don't think a certain dark humor was unintended. But I see the music, along side the dramatic zooms Haynes uses a few times, as a self-aware gesture on the film's behalf. Haynes is criticizing the commodification of real life pain by an uncaring, self-congratulatory system... A system "May December" is, itself, a part of. Grafting a somewhat oversized tone – which also includes on-the-nose visual metaphors, like butterflies emerging from cocoons as people self-realize or women standing in front of mirrors as one copies the other's actions - allows the film to have it both ways. "May December" is well aware of the shaky ethics of adapting real events into tawdry melodrama while also getting to be a tawdry melodrama based on real events. It's a credit to the skill of everyone involved that this comes off as a subversive self-reflection and not a hypocritical, pretentious exercise.

Part of why "May December" is able to pull off such a tricky balance is a cast that commits fully to the material. Julianne Moore gives a multi-layered performance as Gracie, leaving the audience uncertain of what motivates her while never doubting the reality of what she's doing. Moore generates chills in the climatic scene. Natalie Portman creates an almost equally monstrous character, a Hollywood star so high on her own supply that she becomes blind to what she's doing. Yet Portman is also so damn good that you still can't help but be sucked in by a monologue where she describes the process of shooting a sex scene or reads a tearful, heartfelt letter directly into the camera. 

If both actresses are mannered in just the right way, operating with layer upon layer of artifice, Charles Melton is a raw nerve as Joe. He plays the part as an emotionally stunted man-child, clearly uncertain of what to do or how to act in certain situations. Melton is able to get a lot out of scenes of this guy just sitting on a coach, eating chips and texting on his phone. Yet, as the carefully constructed façade Gracie has built for Joe begins to come apart, Melton melts down into a storm of tears and repressed trauma. It's an empathetic, meaningful portrayal of an abused person facing a crisis. 

The last few years have seen multiple projects inspired by nineties tabloid topics. While "I, Tonya" or the Lorena Bobbitt documentary have approached their subjects with either glib sarcasm or feminist revisionism, "May December" is the first of these to really grapple with the existence of that tabloid culture in any meaningful way. And it does so while being thoughtful, insightful, thrilling, disquieting, darkly funny, and wonderfully acted. Todd Haynes was clearly the right person to tackle this one. It certainly says something about the Academy that they weren't quite ready to embrace this one, while heaping nominations on more standard biopics. Nevertheless, "May December" really was one of the best films of last year. [9/10]