May Decem­ber – first-look review

Adding melo­dra­ma to the seem­ing­ly end­less list of gen­res he can turn his hand to, Todd Haynes cre­ates a thorny, com­plete­ly com­pelling fea­ture from Samy Burch’s acer­bic script in May Decem­ber, as an actress tries to get under the skin of the woman she’s sched­uled to play in an upcom­ing biopic. Eliz­a­beth Berry (Natal­ie Port­man) is best known for her work on Norah’s Arc – a tele­vi­sion show in which she plays a vet­eri­nar­i­an. Although she’s ​“so lucky to have the show”, she yearns for the legit­i­ma­cy of a meaty film role, and thinks it might exist in the indie film she’s star­ring in which tells the sto­ry of Joe and Gra­cie Atherton-Yoo.

The cou­ple live in the sub­urbs of Savan­nah Geor­gia with their eigh­teen-year-old twins Mary and Char­lie, who are about to fly the nest for col­lege – by all rights they seem like a sweet cou­ple, but the sto­ry of their rela­tion­ship is revealed to be a con­tentious one, when Gra­cie (Julianne Moore) is unfazed by strangers leav­ing pack­ages of dog poo on their doorstep. It turns out Gra­cie began an affair with Joe (Charles Melton) when he was 13-years-old, becom­ing preg­nant with his child and serv­ing time in prison. Some two decades lat­er they live a qui­et life, and seemed deter­mined to con­vince Eliz­a­beth that they’re just like any oth­er hap­py family.

The devil’s in the details though, and as Eliz­a­beth learns more about the Ather­ton-Yoos from both the fam­i­ly and those that known them, she begins to notice rip­ples in the sup­pos­ed­ly still water. Burch’s script is deli­cious­ly pitched, sly and wry with an under­cur­rent of melan­choly, as Elizabeth’s pres­ence also forces Joe to con­front beliefs he has held about his life for over 20 years.

It’s hard to believe this is Burch’s first pro­duced fea­ture screen­play giv­en the sharp­ness of her dia­logue – she’s unequiv­o­cal­ly now one to watch – while Charles Melton, hith­er­to best known for his roles in CW dra­ma Riverdale and teen weepie All the Bright Places – is a rev­e­la­tion as the mild-man­nered, gen­tle Joe, who holds his own against the star pow­er of Port­man and Moore with ease. Amid the bad actors in his life, one hopes sweet Joe – whose entire life has been shaped by some­thing he was coerced into at 13 – might emerge like the monarch but­ter­flies he lov­ing­ly tends to, and be able to fly far away.

Mean­while, Moore is a soft­ly-spoke, faux-naïve house­wife who ded­i­cates her­self to bak­ing cakes and wears a selec­tion of prairie dress­es, nev­er quite reveal­ing if she’s delud­ed or a mas­ter manip­u­la­tor. Port­man keeps pace as the self-absorbed Eliz­a­beth, who is awful in a dif­fer­ent way, remark­ing in one dark­ly amus­ing aside about the teenagers read­ing for the role oppo­site her, ​“they’re cute, but they’re not sexy enough”.

This is by far Haynes’ fun­ni­est film to date, with shades of Almod­ó­var in its dra­mat­ic zooms and height­ened domes­tic ten­sion. The icing on the cake is Marce­lo Zavros’s score, adapt­ed from Michel Legrand’s gor­geous work on Joseph Losey’s The Go-Between, which adds a sense of dra­ma and mys­tery to every frame. Yet the soap opera shades don’t over­shad­ow the fact there’s gen­uine emo­tion and ten­der­ness here too. Haynes takes the lives of these char­ac­ters seri­ous­ly, even though it’s clear that the rela­tion­ship between Gra­cie and Joe is the prod­uct of an insid­i­ous process of emo­tion­al and sex­u­al groom­ing. When the inevitable con­fronta­tions come about the real­i­ty of Gracie’s actions, she will do any­thing to deflect blame.