May December

"Do it nicely, it really matters how it looks."

The first thing I will say is that for some bizarre reason, this has been nominated in the Musical or Comedy categories for the Golden Globes. I am baffled. 

This Todd Haynes film gave me a creeping feeling of anxiety and low-grade fear. It is largely quiet, the music being the loudest piece of it, which serves to help the anxiety settle in. This is a story taken from that of Vili Fualaau and Mary Kay Letourneau, the subjects of a media frenzy that began in the 90s and has yet to end. As in the Letourneau/Fualaau case, the couple here (played by Julieanne Moore and Charles Melton) met and fell in love when he was 13 years old. What falling in love means versus being taken advantage of is obviously a topic here, spoken of haltingly, heartlessly, and with grief. The couple, Gracie and Joe, have stayed together through media backlash, Gracie's imprisonment, and three children. Natalie Portman plays Elizabeth, an actress from a TV show who has been cast as Gracie in an independent film and has come to Savannah to study her subjects up close and personal. 

Portman is intensely creepy and cold here, like I've never seen her. There is something off about her from the beginning, when she meets the family and their friends at a summer barbecue. The brilliant Moore's expertise in rattled hysteria is on full display, weeping over a canceled baked-goods order. She is a home baker now, having had to upend her whole life. 

Melton is something of a revelation. The actor, like Portman's character, comes to this movie from a TV show, and I can say whole-heartedly that Riverdale did not show his skills to their fullest (no shade, I watched a lot of Riverdale). He plays 36-year-old Joe as a sheltered man in a mid-life crisis, his children all older than he was when he met his future wife; one in college and twins coming up on their high school graduation. He is a care-taker of sorts, cradling Gracie in his arms while she cries, more than once. 

Elizabeth scours the town for interviews with locals and Gracie's children with her ex-husband. She spends some time watching the audition tapes of 13-year-old boys from LA wanting to play the young Joe. None of them are "sexy" enough for the story, she argues. She makes a roomful of teenagers and their drama teacher uncomfortable, talking about the nature of doing sex scenes as an actress. She, sitting alone in the stockroom where Gracie and Joe were first caught together, acts out the sex that she imagines them having. 

The intimacy between Gracie and Elizabeth is electric and feels dangerous. Gracie paints Elizabeth's face to look like hers, teaches her to bake, holding her hands as they pour the cake batter together. These innocuous actions seem much deeper here, the eye contact between them never wavering, the mixture of obsession, pity, and hatred all on quiet show. 

Do not go into this thinking it's a salacious piece. It's a character study that raises and does not answer all of the many questions it poses, and that's ok. Answers aren't always easy, and sometimes, they're unnecessary.