I’m a Natalie Portman fan but not a Julianne Moore one, so May December was a toss-up Natalie won. Turns out, I was too young. They were wrong for this one. But, they did it right.
I’d seen May December as a Cannes premiere but just mentally noted it, more interested in the leads’ red-carpet fashion than the actual film I couldn’t see anywhere at the time anyway. I knew basically it was about an actress playing a grown woman who got pregnant by a child, and both women hanging out for a dramatization’s “research.” I had no clue which actress was the actress and which was the pedophile.
This is cleared up quickly, as who did or will do what and when is not the film’s locus of suspense. That’s all mental. I had only glanced at opening credits and first busy scenes, a bad habit I must always rewind at home or ask questions in the theater for, to finally fall onto a matronly Julianne leaning against a hot young hunk at a barbecue, as Natalie’s swanning character looks on with unapparent emotions. This is the first time, but definitely not the last, that “May December” gets just plain weird.
This hot hunk would be a child sexual abuse survivor were he not playing his role on this very strange scene, if the kids there weren’t calling him “Dad,” if he was the average cougar hit popping by to help instead of stay. No. He’s stuck in a liminal space between victim and survivor. So, maybe a hostage?
Natalie’s TV actress character Elizabeth has come to this small Georgia hideaway town to get the details and depth to play Gracie, Julianne Moore’s character who has been with this 36-year old hunk for 24 years. Gracie spent most of the first five in prison for being caught with him at the pet shop where they both worked and he impregnated her when he was 13. I know… Yikes. Now they’ve settled into the town’s novelty act, a sore subject or protected topic depending on whom Elizabeth tries to interview about them. How they can afford so much elegant house on the waterfront is unexplained by his X-ray technician job and her baking side hustle, so Gracie has talents to exploit more than babies working in a pet shop.
Elizabeth saunters cooly through like the apparently harmless snake she’ll play with in the film’s last shots, where it comes clear who won the women’s battles and the final war. A cast of quite interesting and true young people lead viewers on into John Hughes all-American high schoolers territory. This all spares Gracie, for awhile. She’s an intelligent if overbearing mother, nurturing wife, great hostess, great cook and not a child abuser or monster. Then at some point when the good wife and mother is not even onscreen, it finally hits that the whole movie is about a child molester and her ricochets.
A portrait of Stockholm Syndrome if I’ve ever seen one, the child victim grown up is Gracie’s strongest ally in maintaining a picture-perfect life. Next are the children she had with the child. She would still be behind bars if she was a man. Her so-called husband’s name escapes me now, that is how much of her toy the film’s direction renders him. His regression if not retardation is so obvious all you want is the best for him, and that means anything but his ongoing peaceful trance that he’s made out ok. This sadness only lifts in his strong, loving, devastating cover of his children. He wants so hard to not be a victim and the final verdict that he fails is the fault of everyone but the children.
As Gracie, Julianne Moore is Julianne Moore. But this time I didn’t mind her signature Scarlett O’Hara level uber-drama and white woman tears ugly cry. This was finally the character where everything about her roles that annoy me were not only necessary but indispensable. She is the devil here. I was disappointed to see Natalie join her, possibly, I’m not sure what was going on. But you’ll just want to give these women’s poor piece of meat a hug, E-harmony account or audition for the next season of “The Bachelor.”
As Elizabeth, Natalie Portman sticks to type as a female survivalist who keeps tricks up her sleeves. The biggest one here may be her reminder to the audience, via her teenage audience in a school no less, that lines can blur easily in the creation of art particularly when they involve sex. She is playing a situation worse than Lolita‘s. And if you see her speech, you’ve watched the situation thusfar. I did. And that I didn’t feel ashamed about this was only because it was “art. ” Otherwise, I’d have been out.
No matter what, the children remain uncomplicated victims here- all of them, even the one who grew up too fast but never got to grow up. From Gracie’s family prior to her “affair,” as she prefers to call letting a middle schooler supposedly pursue her, to the children she has with this Peter Pan husband. Any two-person scene with him, whether his father or son or Elizabeth as his scene partner, is worth watching for alone. This story, despite its picturesque Southern setting and attractive cast, is ugly.
Above all, how you feel after 2 hours of its sexiness and humor is a litmus test of who you are. As a woman who’s worked with or taught boys the victim’s age since I was a college girl, I needed to go back, for curiosity of how I could have enjoyed a story of a grown woman being attracted to one. The fact everyone involved in this undertaking really did their jobs is all I have to let myself off the hook.
negression 