Movie Reviews
Movie Review: Emotional complexity, melodramatic wit and masterful acting in ‘May December’
There is hardly a false note in “ May December, ” an audaciously self-aware, mischievously funny and emotionally complex drama that defies simple categorization.
Filmmaker Todd Haynes, working from a script by newcomer Samy Burch, deftly mixes cheesy movie of the week tropes with the psychological depths of Bergman to make this wholly singular piece that never quite lets the viewer relax on solid ground.
The set up involves an actor, Elizabeth Barry, played by Natalie Portman, who is spending some time with the real person she’s decided to play in a film. That subject is Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), who, when she was 36, was arrested and imprisoned for starting a physical relationship with a 12-year-old boy. Two decades later Gracie and that boy, Joe (Charles Melton), are married with three kids, one in college and twins about to go.
There have been cheap, seemingly exploitative movies made about them before, which we get brief glimpses of. Gracie tells Elizabeth, on their first meeting, that she just wants her to tell the story right. Elizabeth responds that she wants her to “feel seen and known.” Both Moore and Portman are smiling sweetly, on perfectly polite stranger behavior, but it is also deeply uncomfortable. Is one lying? Are both? Who can we trust? Who do we like? Does it matter?
We already knew that Haynes was a master of melodrama, with films like “Carol” and “Far From Heaven,” but in “May December” he gestures to the aesthetics of ripped-from-the-tabloids Lifetime fare. He layers that with a boldly dramatic score, borrowed from the past (the late French composer Michel Legrand’s theme from “The Go-Between”) and brilliantly deployed in both comedic and serious ways. Early in the film, Gracie is preparing for Elizabeth’s arrival and opens her refrigerator when the score dips. We brace for something serious and dramatic as the camera zooms in on Moore: “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs,” she says.
Elizabeth isn’t just there to watch them eat dinner and ask some questions. She is wildly driven to get to some sort of truth about Gracie, running around town like an investigative journalist interviewing everyone she can. Portman plays Elizabeth as impishly manipulative, utilizing the full power of her character’s celebrity and its effect on people to get intimate confessions. It is a deliriously fun and unnerving send-up of both stardom and an actor’s process. Late in the film, she calls it a story. Joe reminds her that it’s their actual life. You can almost imagine Elizabeth Barry’s deeply untruthful press tour for the film.
Gracie is harder to grasp, but she will keep the audience, and Elizabeth, on their toes for the duration. Just when you think you have a handle on something, she subverts it. We are, however, treated to some of her private moments that only Joe sees — her fragility, her delusions, her naivete. And Moore and Portman are electric in their scenes together, masterful performers whose characters are similarly performing for one another.
It’s wonderfully fun to watch what they do, how they can make even the most basic of interactions slyly subversive and catty and how both try to maintain control over every conversation. But that they are great is not the big surprise of the film: Melton is. He will break your heart and not because of any huge Oscar-reel moment, but all the small ones leading up to the very earned tears. He’s the sobering remind that behind all the intrigue and scandal and fun of the quest for truth, if we accept the reality of “May December” as some sort of reality, then we have to accept the tragedy of Joe.
Melton plays this 36-year-old father of three college age kids quietly. His first scenes with Gracie show a relationship that reads more mother-son than wife-husband, and not even just because of the age difference. At times he seems like a shadow of a person, playing the role of beer-drinking, hot dog grilling contented dad with an almost empty nest. He is, in this movie, still becoming, and maybe just now starting to grapple with the truth, as he raises his monarch butterflies and attempts to flirt over text with another person.
In fact, Joe, and Melton, might be the biggest masterstroke of “May December.” Scandalous fun and camp are, you imagine, relatively easy with performers like this. But to give it a soul, too? It makes it monumental.
“May December,” a Netflix release in theaters Nov. 17 and streaming Dec. 1, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “some sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language.” Running time: 117 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
Movie Reviews
Chhaya Kadam: Earlier my name wouldn’t even be written in film reviews, now I have a Grand Prix winning film at Cannes
This is clearly the year of Chhaya Kadam! After a great run with the actor’s earlier releases, Laapataa Ladies and Madgaon Express, her film All That We Imagine As Light became the first Indian film to win the Grand Prix at the recently concluded 77th Cannes Film Festival. One of her other films, Sister Midnight, was also screened at Directors Fortnight. Talking to us after the Grand Prix ceremony, Kadam exclaims, “It was the first Indian film to be screened at the main competition in 30 years, and we directly won an award! We had a story rooted in our motherland about women like us. For a subject like that to get selected here… I have no words.”
Acknowledging her great run this year, she says, “People in Cannes also recognised me as Manju Mai (from Laapataa Ladies); they would say, ‘hey Manju Mai, Chhaya Kadam’.”
Kadam’s tryst with acting began in 2006, then she went on to star in Marathi films such as Fandry (2013), Sairat (2016) and Nude (2018). “Earlier, my struggle was to get work; now it is for good work,” she shares, adding that it doesn’t end there. While she’s enjoying the fame now, there was a time when the actor’s work wasn’t recognised. “Earlier, film reviews would miss out on mentioning my name, even if my character was important. Bura toh bahut lagta tha. But then I thought I should work so hard that people are compelled to mention my name in their reviews,” she ends with a chuckle.
Movie Reviews
Ezra (2024) – Movie Review
Ezra, 2024.
Directed by Tony Goldwyn.
Starring Bobby Cannavale, William A. Fitzgerald, Robert De Niro, Rose Byrne, Vera Farmiga, Whoopi Goldberg, Rainn Wilson, Tony Goldwyn, Jackson Frazer, Greer Barnes, Tess Goldwyn, Ella Ayberk, Lois Robbins, Alex Plank, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Matilda Lawler, Joe Pacheco, Amy Sheehan, Barzin Akhavan, Donna Vivino, Jacqueline Nwabueze, John Donovan Wilson, Joshua Hinck, Sophie Mulligan, Thomas Duverné, Guillermo Rodriguez, and Jimmy Kimmel.
SYNOPSIS:
Comedian Max co-parents autistic son Ezra with ex-wife Jenna. Faced with crucial decisions about Ezra’s future, Max and Ezra go on a life-changing cross-country road trip.
Undeniably made with good intentions, Ezra wants to tell a story about a young autistic boy and his father struggling to accept that uniqueness (lamenting that his son will never be “normal”) due to some personal baggage related to his rocky upbringing. Ezra is also a film that consistently gets sidetracked or finds itself telling that story in a broad, mawkish manner with outlandish plot beats that continuously sink the few elements that work. That’s also surprising considering screenwriter Tony Spiridakis (who had been working on the script for roughly 15 years) is basing that father-son relationship on his experience raising an autistic child. Why turn such personal material into… this?
A film about the challenges of parenting an autistic child and ensuring that everything from school to public behavior is going well has enough realistic, stressful drama to be relatable to anyone who has ever been in a similar situation. The dynamic that parents Max (Bobby Cannavale) and Jenna (Rose Byrne) are divorced (the actors are married with children in real life) adds another layer of domestic intrigue.
Directed by Tony Goldwyn, the film seems to have no awareness of when to stop manufacturing more drama or when it begins to feel like piling on for the sake of telling a story that quickly begins to feel false. It becomes less of an earnest look at autistic childhood and more of a far-fetched road trip flick where the logic for certain characters is nonexistent, and the narrative rapidly transitions to do something that could only exist in the movies, something that is counterproductive to why this film was made.
This is frustrating since there are touching flourishes whenever Max interacts with the titular Ezra (William A. Fitzgerald, a delight to watch and autistic). Despite getting expelled from school, Ezra is a kind soul with various stimulation triggers (such as hugs or sensitivity to eating with forks), who often speaks in famous quotes and takes everything literally to such a degree that when he overhears Jenna’s new partner jokingly talking about murdering Max, he frantically runs out of the house to warn his loving father. This leads to Ezra making the choice to run into the middle of the street while scared and avoiding a barking dog on the sidewalk, nearly getting hit by a car, with doctors under the impression that it was a suicide attempt, dealing with the incident by forcing the parents to put the boy into a special needs school and take antipsychotic medication.
That’s only the beginning of this exaggerated story, which then sees Max kidnapping his son from Jenna, believing that she has lost hope in fighting for his rights and is too comfortable listening to professional advice. He doesn’t like that the medication zombifies his son (understandably so) and appears to believe that allowing the boy to go to a special needs school means he is accepting that there is something wrong. Many of his hangups with accepting his son’s autism come from a tumultuous relationship with his father, Stan (Robert De Niro), a former chef who gave up his dreams to provide for Max after his mother left. This grandfather also has trouble acknowledging his grandson’s autism, uncomfortable uttering the term. Both of these men, in a sense, are hiding and running from reality.
Perhaps a more skilled filmmaking team could make something out of that, but Ezra also has to contend with baffling subplots such as Max’s aspiring standup comedian career and his relative closeness to securing a spot performing for Jimmy Kimmel. There is also a road trip aspect that sees Max heading West with Ezra, coming across several old friends for the sake of convenience. In one sequence, the film makes the case that there will be kids (even girls) who accept Ezra and those who will bully him, doing so in a confused way, unsure if it wants to sanitize itself. It’s also accompanied by sappy music.
At a certain point, Ezra is officially reported as kidnapped with warnings and notices throughout the 24-hour news cycle. Max is aware of this, yet confoundingly still thinks showing up to audition for Jimmy Kimmel will end well. The occasional tender moments between father and son are continuously undercut by this stupidity and overblown narrative decisions. At least it follows suit, ending in a fittingly melodramatic cringe.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
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