May-December Movie Review: Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman Starrer Could Have Been So Much More

About May-December

May-December comes preceded by a huge acclaim. It competed in the Palm D’or section of the Cannes Film Festival and was given glowing reviews by American critics.

It is with a heavy heart that I confess I didn’t much like the film, partly for my over-expectations, but more for its utter lack of transparency. This is director Todd Haynes’s fourth film with Julianne Moore and his first with Natalie Portman. He brings together two of the most beautiful American actresses to brew a highly vapid concoction of Hitchcockian mystery and Brian de Palma’s steaminess.

The film fails on both levels. A middling actress Elizabeth Berry(Natalie Portman, for whom playing a nominally known actress must have been a challenge) arrives in Georgia to spend time with a woman Gracie(Julianne Moore) who, we get to know, was a part of a scandal in the past.

Elizabeth is preparing to play Gracie in a movie adaptation.

Has Gracie given in to this intrusion for the money? Or is she doing this to set the record straight about her muddy past? How well has Gracie rehabilitated after the scandal(she had sex with a 13-year-old when she was 36)? We are told she bakes cakes for her friends which they buy out of goodwill. Is that enough reason to think she has been forgiven for the scandal?

An atmosphere of casual crypticism creeps up on the characters enveloping them in the rustling silk of nothingness. I was not sure whether the director wanted us to empathize with Gracie or remain non-judgmental. He lets the mildly interesting melodrama play itself out.

The feeling of emptiness that we share with the two protagonists is our takeaway from this exasperatingly lowkey melodrama where every character seems on slow burn. There are no major confrontations, either between the two lovely ladies, or their past.

The way Gracie’s life is presented in this film doesn’t even seem interesting enough to be made into a movie. The performances are a bit of a lifesaver, though admittedly we have seen both Moore and Portman in much better films and performances. Todd Haynes pitches them together as not confrontational but curious. Elizabeth and Gracie circle each other circumspectly like two Sumo wrestlers warming up for a fight that never happens.

Then there is Gracie’s husband Joe(Charles Melton) who has an embarrassing boys-high-on-joint on their rooftop with his son, and a mortifying sexual encounter with Elizabeth after which we lose respect for both.

As for Gracie, she already lost that during her encounter with a 13-year-old boy.

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