Post by PG Cooper on Nov 23, 2023 13:25:02 GMT -5
The thing I keep coming back to with May December is the fascinating tonal balance Todd Haynes somehow pulls off here. The core of the story is the twisted relationship between Gracie and her husband Joe, who began their affair when Gracie was in her mid-thirties and Joe had just finished seventh grade. The film picks up twenty years later, following Gracie's stint in prison for statutory rape and a plethora of tabloid press, the couple now seemingly settled into relative normalcy and with children of their own, the youngest at the cusp of their high school graduation. Our point of view character, however, is neither Joe or Gracie, but Elizabeth, an actress invited to spend some time with the family as prep to play Gracie in a film depicting the start of the affair.
This is obviously rather upsetting subject matter but Haynes sidesteps a traditionally dramatic approach. The melodramatic concern Gracie shows over a lack of hot dogs in the opening scene set a much different tone, one closer to black comedy. Indeed, the film openly embraces camp aesthetics and tone, not just in some very over-the-top line deliveries, but also some rather pointed cinematography choices and in the repurposed Michel Legrand score, which comes pounding down with all the subtlety of a daytime soap opera. This layer of camp invites the audience to laugh at the absurdity, awkwardness, and degrees of performativity both Elizabeth and Gracie employ throughout. But there's also something disconcerting to the film's method. Camp often has a comedic quality, but fueling that comedy is the way camp renders its subjects as a sort of facsimile, a quotation of the subject rather than the subject itself. Within that representation is an uncanniness that unnerves and disrupts. Rather than putting the audience at ease then, May December's camp elements only increase tension. The laughs, and there are indeed laughs to be found throughout, are followed by this sinking pit in your stomach that things are so horribly wrong. Crucial to this despair is the way that Natalie Portman's Elizabeth gradually (and then suddenly) shifts from audience surrogate for this perverse story to a rather perverse agent in her own right.
More crucial still is Charles Melton's performance as Joe. For all the ways in which Haynes plays up the sensationalist aspects of the story and provides a playground for Portman and Julianne Moore to engage in some intoxicating cattiness between each other, Joe sits at the center of everything, the tragedy of his unfathomable abuse and torment lingering at the margins. As Joe himself tells Elizabeth, this is his life. Despite the camp, the movie treats Joe with the seriousness and gravity he deserves, with Melton astoundingly convincing as a stunted teenager now trapped in an adults body. That Melton is a little younger than the character he's playing, and could convincingly pass for younger still, no doubt helps, but it goes deeper than that. The real trick is Melton's guarded movements, how his face will start to waiver. The scene where he finally confronts Gracie is gut-wrenching, all the more so given he doesn't actually get any closure.
Portman and Moore's performances are a lot more showy but in the best possible way. May December is frankly an exquisite showcase for the multifaceted talents of these women and its treat to watch them work. Moore has been a longtime collaborator of Haynes and in Gracie she finds a totally new persona to join Safe's Carol White and Far from Heaven's Cathy Whitaker. Portman more than holds her own, she may in fact give my favourite performance. Her transformation is less obvious than Moore's and she doesn't mine the emotional depths Melton does, but the slippery nature of her character is utterly captivating. Captivating may well be the best word to describe the whole of May December. I'll be honest, I'm not sure if I quite "got" the film in its entirety or if this review has done it any justice. What I do know is that I was enthralled by May December and it's rarely left my thoughts since the theater.
A
This is obviously rather upsetting subject matter but Haynes sidesteps a traditionally dramatic approach. The melodramatic concern Gracie shows over a lack of hot dogs in the opening scene set a much different tone, one closer to black comedy. Indeed, the film openly embraces camp aesthetics and tone, not just in some very over-the-top line deliveries, but also some rather pointed cinematography choices and in the repurposed Michel Legrand score, which comes pounding down with all the subtlety of a daytime soap opera. This layer of camp invites the audience to laugh at the absurdity, awkwardness, and degrees of performativity both Elizabeth and Gracie employ throughout. But there's also something disconcerting to the film's method. Camp often has a comedic quality, but fueling that comedy is the way camp renders its subjects as a sort of facsimile, a quotation of the subject rather than the subject itself. Within that representation is an uncanniness that unnerves and disrupts. Rather than putting the audience at ease then, May December's camp elements only increase tension. The laughs, and there are indeed laughs to be found throughout, are followed by this sinking pit in your stomach that things are so horribly wrong. Crucial to this despair is the way that Natalie Portman's Elizabeth gradually (and then suddenly) shifts from audience surrogate for this perverse story to a rather perverse agent in her own right.
More crucial still is Charles Melton's performance as Joe. For all the ways in which Haynes plays up the sensationalist aspects of the story and provides a playground for Portman and Julianne Moore to engage in some intoxicating cattiness between each other, Joe sits at the center of everything, the tragedy of his unfathomable abuse and torment lingering at the margins. As Joe himself tells Elizabeth, this is his life. Despite the camp, the movie treats Joe with the seriousness and gravity he deserves, with Melton astoundingly convincing as a stunted teenager now trapped in an adults body. That Melton is a little younger than the character he's playing, and could convincingly pass for younger still, no doubt helps, but it goes deeper than that. The real trick is Melton's guarded movements, how his face will start to waiver. The scene where he finally confronts Gracie is gut-wrenching, all the more so given he doesn't actually get any closure.
Portman and Moore's performances are a lot more showy but in the best possible way. May December is frankly an exquisite showcase for the multifaceted talents of these women and its treat to watch them work. Moore has been a longtime collaborator of Haynes and in Gracie she finds a totally new persona to join Safe's Carol White and Far from Heaven's Cathy Whitaker. Portman more than holds her own, she may in fact give my favourite performance. Her transformation is less obvious than Moore's and she doesn't mine the emotional depths Melton does, but the slippery nature of her character is utterly captivating. Captivating may well be the best word to describe the whole of May December. I'll be honest, I'm not sure if I quite "got" the film in its entirety or if this review has done it any justice. What I do know is that I was enthralled by May December and it's rarely left my thoughts since the theater.
A
