Review - May December
Directed by: Todd Haynes
Written by: Samy Burch
Starring: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton
Running Time: 117 minutes
Rating: 4/5
Ripped from the headlines’ has consistently been a very enticing and seductive origin for melodrama story telling. Wether it’s reenactment true crime docs, weekly network crime shows, Lifetime movies, or big budget Hollywood fare. There is always something compelling about taking a scandal and dissecting it no matter the medium. We all want to know how someone could do something so shocking.
‘May December’ is the newest film from Todd Haynes that follows Natalie Portman playing an actress arriving in a sleepy Georgia town, to meet and study the subject of her next movie. A local played by Julianne Moore, who 20 years ago was arrested and jailed for an extramarital affair with a teenage boy. Moore and the boy later married and had children [while she was in prison]. Portman’s arrival brings up some questionable memories for the couple, and the town at large. Who all have conflicting ideas of what happened long ago.
I don’t really think I have to say this, but I’m going to anyway…Portman and Moore are good in this movie together. They have alot to work with in their scenes. Both are characters who are looking to gain something from their interactions while simultaneously only letting so much of the truth through. Portman is an actress who is intrigued by the why something like this happens, but is fully intending of using to benefit herself. Moore has fully owned what she did but also seems to elicit and manipulate everyone around her in very small ways. It’s really just surprising that these two real life actors haven’t been paired up before, they compliment each others breathy magnetism that can change on a dime to cunning attack mode.
The real stand out for me, story and performance wise, was of the male lead at the center of all this controversy, Moore’s husband Joe, played by Charles Melton. A young man of 35 with three children when we meet him. His scenes have a little more conflict and interiority to them than the female leads do. I think it’s because he is searching for the truth while they are trying to hide it. He’s fairly certain that as a kid, what they did has lead to a good life and family. But looking back, he is forced to address the trauma possibly for the first time, and he does not like what he sees.
Haynes is very much at home in this high camp melodrama. It certainly is asking to be taken aggressively seriously. But also knows what hands it wants to play to mimic the tabloid nature of the subject at hand. It wants to be in conversation of how all forms of media handle stories of this nature. And how the subjects themselves distort the truth to protect themselves both publicly and privately.
While I did very much appreciate many parts of this movie, it didn’t really build towards anything specific dramatically. For the most part that is ok. It’s attempting to peer into people’s lives, and not hanging any dramatic stakes on ‘will Natalie Portman research her role?’, she does.
Because of its lack of dramatic propulsion, it starts to slow down in the back half. People move on rather than arrive at any specific points. And maybe thats the nasty truth of salacious reporting of real life events. At some point they will be away from the cameras, reporters, the gossip, and just be people. What does that leave them with?
