Formerly Known As Cinema

Image Courtesy of Netflix

The best single line of dialog I’ve heard in any film this year may not sound like much out of context, but within the subversive tapestry of Todd Haynes’ deliriously entertaining “May December,” it resonates like a titanium gong.

In the film, TV actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman at the top of her game) has come to Savannah to do research for a film role. While there, she drops by a high school drama class to give a Q&A with the students.

When a smart-ass teen boy asks “Have you acted in sex scenes?” Berry answers the question with a bracing directness that brings a collective blush to the entire room.

First she explains in detail about the intimacy that can develop between two nearly naked, sweaty actors who, after rubbing up against each other for hours, occasionally lose the line between performance and reality. Then she says:

“Am I pretending that I’m experiencing pleasure? Or am I pretending that I’m not experiencing pleasure?”

Aside from the confessional specificity of the line, and the breathtaking vulnerability of Portman’s delivery, Haynes’ frank and personal statement could almost be speaking the subtext of our entire culture, where performative devotion or hyperbolized disdain seem to be the only viable options.

And it’s but one example of the searing honesty that fills every moment of “May December,” a thoroughly modern American film that (unlike most of this year’s crop) manages to attain that rarest of cinematic feats: being a smart drama for adults.

You know a screenplay is well-crafted when each scene not only works beautifully on its own, but fits seamlessly into the script as a whole, working its magic on the moment while also invisibly underlining the main thematic thrust of the film, which, in “May December” turns out to be a deep, respectful dive into the murky relationship between the exploiter and the exploited.

Loosely inspired by the tabloid story of school teacher (and sex-offender) Mary Kay Letourneau and her illicit affair with her twelve year old student, Vili Fualaau, Haynes’ drama manages to bypass the prurience of the material by bringing a welcome layer of abstraction to the plot.

In the movie, Julianne Moore plays the Letourneau role (here named Gracie) as a deeply disturbed woman with a serious chip on her shoulder.

Though she’s served her time in prison, birthed three children and been successfully married to her much younger husband for twenty-two years, she remains a social pariah.

(At the top of the film, she receives a package of feces in the mail, apparently one of many such gifts that have been sent by furious strangers over the years).

The remarkable Charles Melton plays the Vili Fualaau role, (here named Joe Yoo) as a thirty-six year old man-child on the cusp of finding his adult voice. Though a successful doctor, Joe still reacts to wife Gracie like an approval-seeking teenager who’ll do anything to keep mommy from getting upset.

Frozen in the limiting dynamic that was locked into place when he was fourteen, Joe has been unable to navigate the transition from child to adulthood. And any attempts at independence have been derailed by Gracie, a woman who, though twenty-two years his senior, has creepily regressed into the role of an unhappy infant.

Image Courtesy of Netflix

Moore is astounding in the part, sometimes playing a vindictive puppeteer who cruelly pulls the strings of her reluctant, miserable family, at other times lapsing into infantilized crying jags over the slightest bump in the road.

(After Joe has spent the day grilling hot dogs and comes to bed smelling like charcoal, Gracie bitterly complains about him stinking up the sheets. When he asks “Do you want me to shower?” she responds “What I want is for you to have showered before you get in,” then descends into hiccuping sobs.

Moore and Melton’s scenes together are deliciously unnerving with their multiple layers of cringey, passive aggressive manipulation.

And adding to the creep factor is Moore’s occasional use of a little girl voice, sometimes accompanied by a shudder-inducing Cindy Brady lisp.

When it’s announced that an independent film is being made about the couple’s lurid courtship and Elizabeth Berry, the actor playing Gracie (Portman), wants to do research by hanging around town, asking questions and poking into the past, the already precarious marriage begins to seriously unravel.

Though the two women are bristly with each other (Berry’s probing inquiries are frequently met with a snappish “How is that relevant?” from Gracie), it soon becomes clear that a strange form of psychic transfer is underway.

With tonal echoes of Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona” and a creative use of framing, Haynes offers up a series of beautifully staged scenes involving mirrors and mirroring where Portman becomes a virtual doppelganger of Moore.

Image Courtesy of Netflix

And it’s part of the director’s exquisite mastery of form and intent that “May December” works both as a strictly realistic melodrama (with composer Marcelo Zarvos’ adaptation of Michel Legrand’s score for Jospeh Losey’s 1971 period drama “The Go-Between” providing sometimes heavy-handed doses of musical Sturm und Drang) and as a purely abstract art film where Portman’s character could be a non-existent representation of Moore’s unprocessed guilt.

The script is easily the best piece of writing we’ve had all year, with more quotable lines of startlingly deep observation than any five movies combined.

Here’s Joe talking to his son after they have a bonding moment where they smoke a joint together: “God, I can’t tell if we’re connecting or if I’m creating a bad memory for you in real time.”

And the actors, especially those playing Moore’s unhappy children are astoundingly assured in their work. Each kid suffers from their own particular strain of mommy-induced trauma from having been in the toxic wake of Gracie’s selfish petulance.

When one of the daughters pushes back about Gracie’s thoughtless graduation gift of a bathroom scale, Gracie replies, with self-righteous hauteur, “You try going through life without a scale. See how that goes.”

It’s uncomfortable stuff to be sure, but filmed with such a perfectly calibrated combination of utter seriousness and a tongue-in-cheek satirical eye, that it becomes its own kind of existential comedy.

Image Courtesy of Netflix

Julianne Moore’s Gracie is an emotional vampire and one of the most unpleasant onscreen characters we’ve had in some time. And yet, between Moore’s stripped bare performance and Haynes’ passionate writing and meticulous direction, she becomes an acutely flawed yet ultimately tragic antihero.

Her behavior may be reprehensible. But her all too human blindness absolutely broke my heart.

This has not been a great year for American filmmaking. Even the very good “Oppenheimer,” with its kaleidoscopic editing, apocalyptic imagery and profound message about regret, was nearly undone by its overly protracted length.

And I certainly didn’t expect Todd Haynes to arrive here at the tail end of 2023 with a genuine masterpiece in hand to elevate the cinematic conversation. But I’m certainly grateful that he did.

With “May December” he’s reignited my faith in Hollywood and proven that once again, real art can be a healing balm for the worst of times.

STREAMING ON NETFLIX