May December is a Cringe Tragedy
There’s no easy lead in to writing about a movie like Todd Haynes’ May December. The film centers on a couple, Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton), and an odd third wheel, the television actor Elizabeth (Natalie Portman). Elizabeth’s next project is to portray Gracie, and so she’s joined the couple and their children down in Georgia to study Gracie, learn how to express something deeper and true about the woman.
What makes Gracie worthy of such scrutiny and attention is her very life. Gracie is decades older than Joe; when Joe was in the seventh grade, the thirty-six year old Gracie groomed and raped him, became impregnated with his child, and was arrested and sentenced to prison. After her release, the two married. Haynes probes through this foundation of abuse and tabloid life two decades after the fact. The couple does their best to fit in via holiday celebrations and preparing their children for college, but their history is inescapable.
Joe’s first action in the film is to grab a beer, to which Gracie notes, “that’s two.” Their first interaction is one of control, modulation. May December doesn’t shy away from the discomfort of the situation. Every kiss and touch is a disturbance, and Haynes heightens the lurid atmosphere in the filmmaking. Christopher Blauvelt’s cinematography is washed out in the hazy light of a Lifetime thriller, and Marcelo Zarvos’ score breaks in unexpectedly, wild and craving. But this is no daytime television scandal (at least not yet…). Everything here is honed for a sharper provocation.
Everyone here is performing, either for themselves or for others. Both Elizabeth and Gracie are studied, both tittered about. Both of them pretend, playacting interest and manners. But it would be too small a point to see the two women as mirror images (despite the proliferation of reflections). Haynes knows this, even tossing out an overly neat red herring about how they are “basically the same” in the initial few minutes of the movie. Despite vestiges of Persona or Hitchcock’s more psychological thrillers, Haynes deepest interest lies elsewhere.
The dormant focus of May December is not “How did this happen?” but “How do we continue our lives in light of its happening?” There’s denial all around, radiating outward from Gracie’s constant deflecting. Gracie’s ex-husband tells Elisabeth that “our lives felt good,” but the erosion of doubt over decades reads plainly on his face. Her former lawyer wonders if her evil and manipulation has ever really sunk in, but he maintains a relationship with the family.
The acting is appropriately melodramatic. Moore has repeatedly been impressive in this mode, and she is once more. Portman, who has never felt as natural as she aims for, is well employed by Haynes. As a recognizable (but not renowned) television actor, Portman sculpts a stilted physicality. Elizabeth is a performer whose devotion to craft exceeds the grasp of her talent. At times, she elicits something near the same cringes as Gracie, particularly in her faux moment of sexual ecstasy on the musty floor of a pet store’s stockroom.
Melton is the real surprise here. Joe is so silent, deferential, and awkwardly aware of other people’s eyes on him. Especially Gracie’s. Joe is still a kid, uncertain. He is also performing, though he’s entirely unaware of it. He’s playacting adulthood, trying (and failing) to smoke, to play the part of suburban father. He somehow slouches more than his teenage kids. When his chill demeanor finally cracks, Melton is staggering, expressing a cataclysm of adolescent insecurity, fear, and hesitant rage.
To subvert and discomfort us further, there’s a streak of humor running throughout the film, from its opening to its coda. Sometimes the film exaggerates the melodrama to absurd proportions, mocking the cheap thrills of ripped-from-the-headlines adaptations. Or else Haynes cuts the legs out from under his characters, especially Elizabeth. It’s a sly, stabbing humor. We laugh at the profound dysfunction of this world, but then we feel guilty for the exploitation of victims. But hasn’t that always been the tabloid magnetism?
May December is obsessed with juxtapositions and the distance between them. The gap of time between Gracie and Joe; the cruelly smaller gap of time between Joe and his children; Gracie’s tabloid fame and Elizabeth’s stalled career. As it explores all of these, the film exists in a superposition, inhabiting discomfort while being equally disarming. There’s a varnish of manipulation that overlays every interaction, but the substance of empathy manages to peek through. This is clearly true for Joe, but also for his children, uncertain if their troubles are mere adolescence or the fallout of abuse. And for Gracie’s ex-husband, trying to reconcile a life after such an inexplicable shattering.
Haynes’ May December is an uncomfortable film in many ways, all of them intentional. It’s a cringe tragedy. It unmoors the audience’s sympathy with great skill. I can’t say it’s a favorite of 2023, but it’s certainly one of the canniest and most fascinating.
