Todd Haynes returns to melodrama in “May December” with a darkly campy twist that causes his latest work to feel like an odd, yet fascinatingly intriguing, experiment from a filmmaker who is known for meddling with genre and multi-layered conceptualizations. Haynes has the help of his two leading ladies, Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, who are complete forces and effortlessly magnetic.
Although he has ventured into other experimental pieces of works like “The Karen Carpenter Story” or his Velvet Underground documentary, Todd Haynes is one of the few filmmakers who takes from Douglas Sirk’s melodramatic storytelling sensibilities and manages to do something unique with it instead of copying the past’s techniques or reminiscing of a time in cinema gone by. From “Far From Home” to “Carol,” Haynes easily demonstrates what you can do with melodrama with a modern visualization, even when its settings are set in previous decades. And they end up being some fantastic pictures. The union between fully-fledged and complex characters with their multilayered dynamics with one another creates something special. That’s a feeling long forgotten in most of the films we see today. You think about his characters for an extended period. Accompanying that memory, there’s a specific glance that Haynes manages to get out of his actors.
Using a ’90s Scandal as Influence
Just like the Kubrickian haunting stare at the camera. There’s a sensual and piercing look that remains framed like a picture in your house’s halls. Some examples are Blanchett staring at Rooney Mara as she smokes a cigarette or Julianne Moore’s face of disbelief (in addition to Moore’s slowly-gnawing despair in Safe). These single images define the entire movie; imagine how much control a filmmaker must have to do so with such grand effect. It is pretty difficult to fully explain how these still images of expressions pave the way for rich and grounded stories, even with the elevated effect of its melodramatic backbone. But all you need to know is that it all comes together due to the characters’ magnetism with one another and the viewer with them while watching.
For his next venture into the Sirk-like world, Todd Haynes presents to us “May December” (the opening film of this year’s NYFF). It’s a film that recalls his previous works, with different outskirts reliant on shadowing personified and telenovela panderings. For his latest piece of work, Todd Haynes uses a real-life ’90s scandal where a thirty-four-year-old teacher named Mary Kay Letourneau had an intimate relationship with one of her students – a twelve-year-old, to be more specific. And there’s an even more shocking factor interlaced in this slightly provocative eye-raiser. The teacher gave birth to their child while awaiting her sentence. You’d think that their relationship would end there since she is off to prison. But that isn’t the care here.
After a couple more meetings, as the on-and-off-prison encounters piled up, they married each other years later. That’s the true scandal, but not the exact one seen in “May December.” Of course, there are various similarities and a few differences from the nucleus of the situation. The most significant change of them all is the addition of Natalie Portman’s character, a Hollywood A-lister named Elizabeth Berry. She is amped to begin production on a picture based around an old and provocative tabloid story where a woman, Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), after a fling with him during middle school, married Joe (played by Charles Melton when older).
The Psychological Dissection of Shadowing
To this day, they remain tied together, with kids and a house on the prairie. Life is good for them, separating themselves from all the drama that transpired in the past. Elizabeth just wants to do some close and personal research before filming begins. They want to avoid repeating what they went through. However, spouses accept her company and questions so she can prepare for her role. During a backyard barbeque, the Hollywood star arrives. She walks through the housing moments after complaining about her hotel and the over-talking driver. It’s the type of persona that Gracie awaits in her humble abode. But she opens the doors for her, as she’s the honorable guest.
With a broad smile and kinetic energy, Gracie awaits Elizabeth. But what will happen to her once the actress learns the details about her relationship with Joe? Of course, some of these details are out in the world. It ended up as a vast scandal twenty years before the film’s 2015 setting. But what about the reasons and emotions felt by both players at the time? That’s what Elizabeth is looking forward to discovering. Getting it out of Gracie and Joe will be an arduous task. That psychological dissection is accompanied by more than secrets. There are ominous musical strings, zoom-ins, and somewhat campy dialogue, just like in a telenovela, as well as the melodramatic pandering we are used to seeing in Haynes’ projects. The director’s premises are always hard tasks, blending many elements and emotions with the complex story and background.
He may have his hardest is with “May December”: trying to blend irony and heartfelt sincerity out of a fragile idyll, as well as exploring a figure that isn’t easy to understand. But that isn’t all that Haynes is dealing with here. He wants to talk about Hollywood’s morality and its outlook on such scandalous stories through the character of Elizabeth. She’s the one who arrives there for self-serving reasons and thinks everything is not off-limits. And who gave her the right to act in such a manner? Elizabeth believes she has the entitlement to do some thorough research. Yet nobody knows the exact reason why she has a big attraction to such a role in the first place.
Portman and Moore Carry the Film on Their Backs
Portman sells every one of these aspects with ease. Her detachment from reality is because of her stature as a celebrity, yet self-reflexive enough to showcase the character’s psychological complexity as she turns from actress to player as each interaction occurs. Accompanying her is Julianne Moore, who’s just as good as Portman and delivers a double-sided performance that’s just as hilarious as it is rich in characteristic texture. Haynes has a gift for making his actors get the better of themselves. He expresses all of the genre-crossing beats with a melodramatic undertone.
Elizabeth often believes she is reasonable compared to Gracie and her actions. Haynes occasionally sets up campy jokes about the validity of canceling people in our times. But, looking at it from a deeper glance, Elizabeth isn’t an entirely good person either; there’s dark and cold sensation paving its way through each word spoken. This is seen in scenes like when Elizabeth is shown the audition tapes of her young on-screen partner for the movie. She basically says that the kid isn’t “sexy enough.” They are unavailable people who don’t express themselves appropriately to the public. However, Elizabeth opens up more about what she doesn’t like because of her “earned entitlement”. Haynes describes all of this through darkly campy and intricate dialogue and meta-textual scenarios. He plays with our expectations of what a melodrama could be.
He lounges into this intertwining between dark camp and confounded drama constantly, except for Charles Melton’s character, to whom he dedicates plenty of scenes to examine the life of a person stripped of their youth due to an illicit relationship. In a way, that makes “May December” tick. All of these different schematics being fitted onto one another with such precision, strange stylistic choices, and complex analysis of its multi-layered themes and context. It is a rather odd experiment by the filmmaker who doesn’t stick to one single method or story. But one that shows some new techniques and playfulness with a subgenre he has meddled with in the past, now seen in a modern light via its depicted issues and conceptualizations.
“May December” is currently playing at the New York Film Festival. The festival goes from September 29th – October 15th. Join us for continual coverage.
