May December: The story of a woman who faced public wrath for loving a minor

Nothing in May December is what it seems. The film unravels in the high-strung beats of a melodrama (Marcelo Zarvos’ music amping up the stakes) but embedded within are revelations fit for a slow-burn horror story. Characters when alone behave with such excess like they are constantly apprehending an audience. Courier, respectfully kept outside a door, turns out to be a bag full of shit. Bedroom in a marital house becomes a site of prolonged abuse even if it bears no sign of strife.

The story of a functional marriage

Written by Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik, the film is loosely based on the Mary Kay Letourneau case from the 90s’ where the eponymous American high school teacher was jailed for grooming her sixth grade student, Vili Fualaau. In Haynes’ recreation, the characters are called Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore) and Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), a married couple in the neighbourhood, who the community insists on protecting. An occasional brown bag might turn up outside their house but people are largely kind. They know Gracie has faced enough. She was married with kids when she was caught having sex with a student, leading to public outcry and imprisonment. At that time, she was 36 and Joe was in the seventh grade.

But things unfolded favourably. They got married and had kids. Their two-decade domestic bliss is for all to see. He comforts her when she is sad, she curls up to him when she breaks down, their children are awaiting graduation. Gracie tells Joe to get takeaway at night, he does it. She tells him to take his things outside, he does it. Their marriage is functional, evident even to their new guest, Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman), the actress visiting them in preparation of her new role of playing Gracie.

Her arrival brings a fresh pair of eyes and a new lease of scrutiny to their situation, a fact Gracie is aware of and vexed about. Her children too are wary. Beneath their cordial exterior lurks curiosity. They are eager to know how Elizabeth sees their mother — as a paedophile, or as a woman in love. Does she see Gracie’s marriage that has been functional for over two decades or is she more concerned about the stigma associated with it?

A woman who is wronged

Critical or not, Elizabeth is drawn towards Gracie with the urgency of an investigative journalist. She meets the former husband, children from her past marriage, and retraces the steps back in time when the relationship was a scandal. Haynes, who made the hypnotic Carol (2015), lends a similar brand of allure between the characters.

May December can easily be read as a staring competition between two women, each waiting for the other to blink first. Several shots in the film comprise the two female protagonists looking at their reflections in the mirror as the narrative plays out the aftermath of their interlocked gaze. When Elizabeth starts fashioning herself after Gracie, the physical transformation leaks into her soul, revealing and reiterating that they might be more similar than they accounted for.

On the surface, Haynes’ outing outlines the transmutation of an artist in the pursuit of art. But he uses that in service of something else. It is difficult to not read May December, a film on grooming, as a stringent attack on art itself and the many ways in which it has continued revamping the lopsided power dynamic, enclosed in the arrangement, as a romantic hurdle. The filmmaker too mimics it.

Gracie is depicted as a woman who is wronged. She faced public wrath, all in the name of love which was stigmatised by the rest. Tender moments of her trying to hold her life together are interspersed with Joe texting an unknown woman. Her lapse of judgment in the past pales before the life of solitude that has been chosen for her.

The filmmaker treats her with such ambivalence that it feels like compassion. At some point, her son from the previous marriage confides in Elizabeth that Gracie was abused by her brothers, a detail so shocking that it makes the actress break character and state, “Now it makes sense.” An abuser was repeating the cycle. This is all she knew.

A young man entrapped in his own story

There is remarkable craft in the way Haynes draws out these nuggets, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fated to come together at the end. It is only when they fit that the horror of realisation strikes. It is only when we look away from the reflections on the mirror do we notice a 36-year-old man, as old as Gracie was when she first met him, not allowed to see himself.

It is only when we see beyond the social labels conferred on him— a victim or a lover — do we find a young man entrapped in his own story. His dynamic with Gracie makes him feel empowered which, it dawns on me, he mistook it for power. His college-going son tells him not to worry and Joe holds him close and says, “that’s all I do.” He breaks down seeing his children graduate, mourning through his tears the future he will never have.

Haynes does not temper the tragedy here. Instead, he goes all out with his biting indictment as the film concludes with an exaggerated scene of Elizabeth (playing Gracie) seducing a young Joe. Technically, the moment belongs to May December and yet it does not. In his telling of Gracie and Joe’s story, the filmmaker evokes the past only in flashes, careful not to recreate it. He does it at the end in the guise of someone else’s film. It is an inflated moment that possesses no nuance and outlines with forceful clarity the extent to which the lines were transgressed. But the filmmaker includes it to offset the misleading subtlety of art with its excess.

May December is currently running in theatres