Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore shine in a teasing drama on public scandal and private desire.
Todd Haynes, director of Far From Heaven (2002) and Carol (2015) is the most nuanced, stylish and humane excavator of America’s moral fault lines. Here he delivers an arch, twisting, wickedly funny drama that is his most gripping work to date. At the age of thirty-six, Gracie (Julianne Moore) triggered a national tabloid scandal by having an affair with a thirteen-year-old boy. Twenty years later, the couple is happily married and moving on with life when Hollywood actress Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) arrives to research her portrayal of Gracie in an upcoming film. But Elizabeth’s methods embed her too closely within the relationship and re-open unanswered questions. May December is a layered, teasingly unfolding tour de force which shows that even if you have all sides to a story, you still might never know the real truth.
“Both wickedly funny and piercingly sad, Todd Haynes’ new film ponders one such improbable union — the subject of a national tabloid scandal, no less — as it lurches through its third decade.” (Film of the Week)
“Todd Haynes has not only indeed built a character-driven masterwork, but one of the finest of his fascinating career.” (Screen Anarchy)