The 2023 New York Film Festival will kick things off with Todd Haynes’ May December, which costars Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore. The opening night selection will screen on 9.29 at Alice Tully Hall.
“May December Feels Strained, Clumsy,” posted from Cannes on 5.21:
“May December struck me as awkward and even silly at times. Haynes tries for a tone that mixes satiric whimsy and overheated emotional spillage while channeling Bergman’s Persona, but scene after scene and line after line hit me the wrong way.
“It’s about a famous actress, Elizabeth Berry (Portman), paying a visit to the pricey Savannah home of Gracie Atherton (Moore), a somewhat neurotic and brittle 60something who runs a dessert-cooking business. Elizabeth’s plan is to study Gracie as preparation for a soon-to-shoot film about her once-turbulent life, which involved a scandalous sexual affair with a minor and a subsequent prison term. Elizabeth naturally wants her forthcoming portrayal to deliver something truthful, etc.
“For her part Gracie is cool with the arrangement but at the same time a wee bit conflicted and anxious. She’s calculated that she’ll come off better in the film if she invites the pissing camel into the tent**.
“Seemingly modelled on the late Mary Kay Letourneau, a former school teacher who was prosecuted and jailed for seduced a 13 year-old boy named Vili Fualaau, Gracie is married to Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), a 36 year-old half-Korean dude who was also 13 when Gracie technically “raped” him while they were working together at a pet store, and with whom they now have two or three kids. (This is one of those films in which the exact number of kids in a given family is of no interest to anyone…zip.)
“If I didn’t have a Salle Debussy screening of Karim Ainouz‘s Firebrand breathing down my neck, I would list the eight or nine things that especially bothered me last night. Suffice that my basic reaction was one of exasperation. I literally threw up my hands and loudly exhaled three or four times. I groaned at least twice. I’m pretty sure I muttered “Jesus!” a couple of times. I also recall slapping my thigh.
“For what it’s worth Letourneau and Fualaau insisted from the get-go that their relationship was consensual; ditto Gracie and Jo in May December‘s backstory. After serving her prison term Letourneau married Fualaau and soon after had kids with him; same deal with Moore and Melton’s pretend couple.
** Exact Lyndon Johnson quote: ‘It’s better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.'”
