May December (Todd Haynes, 2023) (Patreon)

As is often the case with Todd Haynes' films, May December is organized according to a very specific conceptual matrix. Haynes is not a filmmaker who discovers the meaning of his films along the way, but creates them as sort of Platonic models of his particular philosophical understanding about the subject at hand. And one of the constants of Haynes' filmmaking is the idea that representation and/or performance reflect the universal human condition, so when you make a film, you are representing a set of representations, not some objective reality.

With this in mind, there's an inherent perversion involved in his fictionalized consideration of the Mary Kay LeTourneau case. Haynes has selected an overtly sensationalist topic, one that presses a great many cultural hot buttons, in order to cool the whole thing down. Where we typically think of melodrama as an emotionally heightened genre, Haynes (like his masters, Sirk and Fassbinder) recognizes that there is an intensity dial on melodrama's flame. It can be set to boil or to simmer, depending on the needs of the material.

May December mostly remains in a rather chilly register. That's because the story itself speaks to two of the dominant reactionary discourses of the moment. One, that America is filled with child molesters lurking in every shadow; and two, that the significant differences between men and women are biological rather than cultural. The LeTourneau story throws a conceptual wrench in the works by demonstrating how incompatible these ideas can be. We know, legally and intellectually, that LeTourneau was a child molester. But we also want to hold fast to the comforting fiction that a woman cannot rape a man, that biology trumps age and that in a heterosexual pairing the male is always dominant. When Joe (Charles Melton), now an adult, asks Gracie (Julianne Moore) if maybe they should consider whether their relationship and subsequent marriage was based on her betrayal of his innocence, she clamps down on a narrative that absolves her. "Who was in charge?" she demands, and for her, the answer is clear.

There is the parallel track -- can't call it a "plot" exactly -- of Gracie and Joe being observed by Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), a TV actress who will soon star as Gracie in a biopic. I am sympathetic to those critics who argue that this element adds little of substance to the film, although it does serve a literary function for Haynes, setting the two women up as doubles and foils to each other. We are meant to understand that Elizabeth thinks Gracie is naive, oblivious to the fact that her Southern suburban bubble is a fabrication, something she aggressively wills into being. But Gracie is the better actress, of course. It's not just that Elizabeth is pretty clearly a medium talent at best. Haynes is implicitly using Method acting to hold the entire notion of a coherent subject up for scrutiny, if not ridicule.

When she seduces Joe, Elizabeth seems to think she is being a good actress, seeing in him what Gracie saw while also maintaining the necessary distance to leave the performance behind. Joe feels used, and Elizabeth retorts, "this is what grown-ups do." Much is made of Elizabeth's fame and urban sensibility, that she'd look down on Joe and Gracie and their friends. But Elizabeth's contempt runs a bit deeper than class snobbery. Since Gracie sees through her, Elizabeth relies on Joe to reassure her she is a good, non-exploitative person. But when pressed, she reminds Joe that he was cheated out of a childhood, that he is just playing victim because that's all he'll ever be.

There is a subtle shift in May December when the basic parameters of Gracie and Elizabeth are established, and we realize that Haynes' film is actually about Joe. Melton's complex performance displays his unsteady masculinity, his quiet demeanor concealing years of hurt that the dominant version of his story -- "who was in charge?" -- cannot permit. Gracie went to prison but she convinced herself that she was exonerated by love, indeed like she was the heroine in a melodrama. But Joe was given no choice but to try to normalize his untenable situation. To some extent, he succeeds. Haynes shows us unambiguously that he is a good father. But for the most part, he has spent his life concealing a wound that most sex / gender discourse refuses to believe exists. How can you try to heal when no one thinks you're actually hurt?