Peace is sitting on a lake in the summertime
Peace is a coca cola on a hot summer day
Peace is being with you
Those are the words that a visibly uncomfortable Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) recites in a perfect, suburban kitchen, after days or weeks of following Mary Kay Letourneau Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore) and her extremely fucked up family. Gracie’s eyes are both pleading and pestering, and Elizabeth holds the letter like it’s a very fragile relic. By all accounts, it’s a 24-year-old piece of paper that sits conveniently in the kitchen. A monument to the love between the man and woman of the house. A prop to guide the conversation where Gracie wants to go. But sincerely written, nonetheless. Then the other shoe drops.
The assignment was “what is peace?”.
She was his seventh-grade teacher.
Todd Haynes’ latest directorial piece is the story of one actress, one woman past middle age, and the 23-year younger husband she met and groomed while teaching his seventh-grade class. She was 36, the same age her husband is now, and he was 13. Over two decades later, they’re basically an old married couple. They met in a pet store. Their youngest children are graduating high school. Again, he’s just about 36. The age the actress playing his wife is. She’s screening for 13-year-olds to play him in the movie.
He was 13.
She was 36.
This is firmly a movie made in the style of the “women’s film”. A film about women, in the style of an old-fashioned melodrama. Two personalities duking it out. It’s not so much a narrative, but a series of moments designed to reach the climax in the final 30 minutes. As Jeanine Basinger would write in ‘A Woman’s View’ (1993);
“No one ever suggests how unintentionally liberating a form the woman’s film actually was.”
‘May December’ (2023) feels like it’s in conversation with two very distinct types of media, and the most obvious one is the “woman’s film”, but the other being true crime. Both literally, considering the Lifetime-type movie Portman’s character is researching for, but also in how she’s researching. The meta-movie itself, which only appears at the end, feels like a punchline to a very long, sad joke. She uproots their lives, reminds everyone of their trauma, and leaves to make another piece of shit, much like the one she manages to find and deliver to them at the start of the film.
I’m not the only one who does this – Gracie makes it seem that way.
The house that all this takes place in is a mausoleum. It’s light, and airy, and tastefully decorated. A lovely kitchen leading out to a nice deck and a big back yard. A top floor window that leads out to a roof, used as a regular hangout spot by the kids and husband. Returning to Basinger, she describes the importance of “spaces and the concept of space” within the woman’s film, and this is decidedly Gracie’s home, not her husband’s. Not even just the house, but the yard, the town, and their life. A clean, suburban tomb, where the family that was built on one boy’s pain and suffering is hidden away.
Todd Haynes’ depiction of Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) is distinct in its tragic banality. Joe is a victim who is constantly reassuring his predator that their love is still strong. That the world will eventually understand that is not a victim. All the while, he spends his days sleep walking through the performance of being a husband and father.
You get the sense that not only does nobody care what happened to him then, but nobody respects what he’s doing now. He’s incredibly lonely, reaching out to basically strangers on Facebook. There’s a scene in the film where Joe is explaining his hobby of raising monarch butterflies to Elizabeth, and you see a young man who, for the first time in a long time, isn’t being put down while getting passionate about something. The household, which we were invited to while it was full of life and running children, is cold and empty. Even an actress giving stilted, polite interest is more affection than he receives from Gracie or his children throughout the film.
Joe is a difficult character that could quite easily have been snivelling or stilted. Melton manages the best of both worlds, creating a man who is equally repressed and invested. While the truth of his grooming is always just few breaths away, his tight lips and often heavy gaze work very hard against the mounting realities of what the age gap in his relationship represents.
All this is stuck into harsh reality when the film shifts to his point of view.
Compare the film to something like ‘Notes On A Scandal’ (2006), which never moves any closer to grappling with the grooming at its centre than Sheba and her flaccid attempts to justify her actions. Or ‘A Teacher’ (miniseries, 2020), which only really allows the male victim of grooming to voice his pain towards the end. Or even ‘Riverdale’ (2017-2023), which basically circles the grooming storyline for years, until it finally decided to treat it like a traumatic event. These narratives centre the predation, the lust, the high emotions of being caught in the act.
‘May December’ is about the aftermath.
You’re so young. Believe me – you could start over.
There are three moments that make up the third act of this film. Joe and Elizabeth have sex and fight about her intentions towards him, Gracie, and the wider narrative of his family. Joe and Gracie have a confrontation about their relationship, where she blames him for the wider scope of their awful love affair. And the final moments of the film, where Elizabeth reinacts the “seduction” of Joe, repeatedly and with enthusiasm.
In three moments, you see this victim of grooming through three different lenses.
One is sympathetic, but distant. Elizabeth offers Joe a taste or normalcy and adulthood. A quick fling that means very little substantly, but a lot in the grand scheme of Joe and his lifetime of lost opportunities. For Elizabeth, this is just part of her wider scheming to try and make a better movie than she ultimately will. Portman plays the shallow sympathy she has towards her subjects so well. The vulgarity of her whole endeavour. Her character has sex with Joe, so she will have sex with him. For Joe, it’s the first time in his adult life that he’s acted on sexual urges outside of the confines of a marriage built of taking advantage of his budding manhood. All this is incited when gives her a letter Gracie wrote for him, which she recites it as a monologue. It’s all about her cheap, tawdry picture.
The second is the reinforcement of the predator’s narrative. Julianne Moore, with eyes as wide and as flat as plates, repeats a mantra to Joe stop talking. “Who was in charge?” she chants, refusing to admit that she was. When that doesn’t work, and he basically calls out the ridiculousness of her actions in a fit reminiscent of an emotional child, she chides him for the timing. Not the content, but the context. It is graduation. And things must be done a certain way. Their dynamic is always reminiscent of a teacher and student, or mother and son. She scolds, he crumbles.
The third is, despite all Elizabeth’s efforts to the contrary, just more tabloid sensationalism. Elizabeth’s brief returns to her work life reinforce that this is a money-making m venture. She goes over budget in her research project. She scans through potential actors for the role of Joe at 13 and rejects them for not being “sexy” enough. In the end, the boy playing Joe looks to be basically an adult. Because, in the end, this is a movie about the people who suffer to make that type of movie happen. The movie itself is always the same. Trashy and exploitative.
Is this that type of film?
‘May December’ manages to escape the key point of criticism to most media about grooming. It is solely about the aftermath, a time when everyone involved is an adult with autonomy and personhood. In many ways, that’s the right approach. It even manages to touch on the insanity of the age difference by showcasing just how young a 13-year-old boy is.
The moments of intentional humour sit firmly in the first half, and all seem to be around the inherent funniness of melodrama. It’s the type of movie that wants you to enjoy it’s scene setting before the reality crashes in. The soap opera music, the intense, empty pauses, and even the often-stilted dialogue, it all circles the same point. When the film gets honest about the situation, all of that leaves the audience feeling guilty in their own right. It was always a situation to be taken seriously.
On the other hand, this is a purposefully trashy film about a victim of grooming. While efforts have clearly been made to treat the subject matter carefully, it’s also very much a piece of cinema that sits easily amongst any melodrama. You can take the tragedy as seriously as you want, but the style sits firmly in a space that often reads as comedy. Particularly between Moore and Portman, who spar in a way that feels almost silly.
Julianne Moore plays a monster. A selfish, cruel woman who stole a boy’s transition to manhood. It’s a performance with very little space to play with empathy, and I would argue only works if you see her primarily as the antagonist. Which you should, but I would argue the writing at least feints towards nuance that it’s almost scared to touch upon. She’s too stiff, too rehearsed, to really sell any of the suggested foundations of her character. It’s a deliberate decision, but one that maybe could have been reconsidered to root her more firmly against Melton’s performance, which is incredibly vulnerable.
Elizabeth’s description of a closed off and birdlike woman in regard to Gracie at the top of the film is totally on the mark, and that’s a problem for the film. People within this world sympathise with her. The audience should understand why. Instead, you’re left with a character that equally unlikeable and dominant. She ends the film on her own terms, but arguably shouldn’t have.
I’m secure. Make sure you put that in there.
There’s so much about this film that just…works against itself. The script is often too willing to go for a punchline that feels out of place. The score is ridiculous on purpose, in a way that often detracts from the emotional weight of the scene.
It's incredibly self-aware. Too much so, in many moments. You get the overwhelming sense that this is a movie that knows the audience is going to adore the actress team up, and because of that, it needs to give them some scenery to chew. Which is fine. But I question moments like Elizabeth acting out the “seduction” in the storeroom, or the music swell as she watches Gracie walk away.
It's a very distinct film. One with a clear vision put forward effectively. The foreshadowing of a trashy retelling of the story playing behind Gracie, later to be essentially rehashed by Elizabeth in her own film, is one of many details that reek of intention and attention to detail. But in context of the story it is telling, I don’t feel 100% comfortable with the vision. At least, I don’t think the way it’s handled is always cohesive. That’s a huge part of the point. But I cannot enjoy it for what it is without some feeling of discomfort, not in the subject matter, but the balance of tone. It comes very close to sticking the landing, but I have to acknowledge the wobble on the dismount.
If you like Todd Haynes, like melodrama, like movies that are sincerely emotional and chaotic – this will work for you. I don’t know if it’s the most deftly handled version of this story that could have been told, but there’s nothing distinctly offensive, more just a touch tactless. It’s extremely effective for most of the run time, and I think it’s worth it for Melton’s performance alone, let along the dozens of other fantastic details. For many, my concerns will not be their own, and the strength of it all will justify itself. It’s likely there’s no “perfect” version of ‘May December’ that could be made. The one we got is still pretty fantastic.