Credit: François Duhamel / Courtesy of Netflix
The Oscars are inching closer and it would be a dereliction of duty if I did not review at least one of this season’s weirdo films. May December is nominated for Best Original Screenplay, and though screenwriter Samy Burch does not appear to be queer after a cursory internet search, openly gay director Todd Haynes has delivered a queer gem for the cuckoo birds among us. While the film has no gay sex, the vibe is deeply homoerotic and highly campy. This is not a movie for virgins who can’t drive, so if you are sensitive please get out of the car.
Warning: there will be spoilers.
Inspired by one of the most scandalous news stories of the 90s, May December tows us down a craggy road of sexual immorality. The ability of a woman to rape a man has long been a source of heated debate, even in the case of a minor. The matter becomes further complicated when the victim insists no crime has been committed. In this particular instance, the key players themselves do not agree with the legal outcome. Personally, I believe that what Mary Kay Letourneau did was morally wrong and should be illegal. But whether or not she should have gone to prison for raping her 12-year-old student is where I am embarrassed to admit that I get a little fuzzy, especially in light of the fact that she was pregnant with her victim’s baby and the two ultimately decided to remain a couple for almost two decades. Did her prison sentence repair harm, or did it create more harm? I don’t know that this is an answerable question. Right or wrong, there were no rules stopping Vili Fualaau from subsequently marrying his erstwhile rapist. Would Fualaau have married Letourneau if the media and the legal system had not created an us-against-them dynamic? Ten years before same-sex marriage was fully legalized in the Unites States, no one questioned the legality of Letourneau and Fualaau’s nuptials. Morality and legality are two different things, after all. The wedding became a tabloid affair that the world could freely rubberneck. This rubbernecking is the core of May December. More than being about a disturbing union, the film is about watching, being watched, and the effect the watching has on the watched as well as the watchers. Watching is a form of participation, and May December sustains the audience’s complicity in this salacious feedback loop.
The opening notes of Marcelo Zarvos‘s score scream RED ALERT, EMOTIONAL DANGER AHEAD, and the feeling of careening directly into a 90s made-for-TV movie carries through visually with a heavy graininess that lets us know we are not going to be seeing reality very clearly. Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) is a Hollywood actress visiting the home of Mary Kay Letourneau stand-in Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), the subject of her upcoming film. What begins as a research trip ultimately transgresses the boundary of study when Elizabeth dangles herself in front of Gracie’s young husband and victim, Joe (Charles Melton). When Joe feels victimized by Elizabeth’s advances, Elizabeth reminds him that he’s a consenting adult now. What he’s experiencing is the normal fallout of adult sexuality. But is this really true? She has taken advantage of him in a way. Of course, he did want to have sex with her, and was glad to have done so up until the moment he realizes Elizabeth does not think of him as a permanent situation. Joe’s need to feel like a victim in this instance butts up against his rejection of that label in his relationship with Gracie. Any time you think you’ve found the true side of this story, the coin is flipped to reveal another equally true side.
We have to talk about Julianne Moore’s performance, because the sincerity of delivering what is obviously camp feels like a whole new level of camp that is still definitely 100% camp, I don’t care what you read and why you think that would disqualify this. Moore gave Gracie a lisp, a choice that sends the movie to another dimension, but is at the same time deeply rooted in the truth of the character. Gracie is what would happen if Humbert Humbert swapped his own identity with that of who he imagines Lolita to be, so it genuinely makes sense. Gracie is such a proponent of her own delusions that anyone in her orbit has to at least pretend to buy into the delusion, too. She’s intensely manipulative, prone to fits of toddler-style crying to get her own way. Gracie claims to be naïve and she does appear to be so, but the film also depicts her as a skilled hunter who frequently kills their dinner with a shotgun. Because she does not seem to know herself, it becomes impossible for anyone else to know her, which creates a delicious tension for Elizabeth.
Elizabeth tries Gracie on like a costume. She slips into her lisp, dons her wispy voice, and even struts her “very sexy baby” act in front of real teenaged boys. The two women are frequently looking into mirrors together, where they talk to each other’s reflections. In what turns out to be the hottest scene in the film, Gracie gives Elizabeth a makeup tutorial. Gracie abandons the idea of demonstrating on her own face, insisting on using Elizabeth’s face as her canvas instead. In a moment of thinly veiled seduction, she paints Elizabeth’s lips with her bare finger. The actual sex scenes in this movie are purposefully putrid, but this moment had me begging the women to kiss. The age difference between Gracie and Elizabeth versus Gracie and Joe is exactly the same, but it feels so much more appropriate here. In another situation, one might have to call gender into question, but the pure ick factor of the origin of Gracie and Joe’s relationship cancels that out, especially since Joe seems to be emotionally stunted by his premature adulthood.
Every character in this film struggles to be the author of their own narrative. Elizabeth needs a juicy role so she can be seen as a great actress, Gracie needs the fairytale version of her fucked up actions to be true so she doesn’t have to be judged as villain, and Joe needs to be the decider of his destiny rather than forever being known as a victim. These narratives depend on shaping the views of strangers. The title May December describes what people might think of Gracie and Joe if they saw them without knowing their past. A normal May December relationship isn’t unethical even though it might be source of derision from outsiders. But the concept of outsiders is muddied when private matters become public knowledge.
This movie about making a movie about a tabloid story about two real people has us digging for a truth that we can never seem to grasp. Where’s the line between fact and fiction? We’ll never know the real story, because the characters themselves don’t seem to know, and we’ve never quite believed the real people at the root of this tale. The more we tell or watch this story, the more it warps before our very eyes.
Watch May December on Netflix.
