May December. 117 minutes.
MA 15+
Four stars
When the score to a film is done well, you don't even notice that you're being manipulated by it. You're just swept up in the moment. But that's not the case in Todd Haynes's new film May December.
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Composer Marcelo Zavros wants you to feel like you're being manipulated so that you better understand the inherently soap-operaticness of the drama unfolding before you, dressing scenes with sometimes aggressively hit piano keys that punctuate sentences, sometimes with mysterious little refrains that make us wonder the real meaning behind the actors' conversations.
This is all because the film's lead couple, played by Julianne Moore and Charles Melton, have lived their lives as infamous tabloid magazine fodder which has made everything about their lives just like a soap opera.
Used to being the centre of unwanted attention, Gracie (Moore) and husband Joe (Melton) have been married for 20 years and have raised teenage twins (Gabriel Chung and Elizabeth Yu) just about to graduate from high school.
They've agreed to let famous actress Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) spend the week with them as Elizabeth has been cast in an upcoming film about their lives, and she wants to get a feel for them as a couple and to study Gracie's mannerisms.
Despite this very obvious and famous intrusion in their home, Gracie and Joe are trying to keep their focus on the kids in their special graduation week.
But there's not much normal in the lives of a couple who spent a decade on the covers of sensationalist newspapers thanks to the age difference between them, literally a criminal offence that saw Gracie give birth in prison, and past wounds get reopened as Elizabeth starts pressing on sore points.
Haynes makes complex films that reward on rewatching.
Audiences are hungry for true crime and Samy Burch and Alex Mechanic's screenplay explores the mechanics behind the adaptation process that turns a salacious real-life event into a movie. Imagine Toni Collette's process as she developed her Katherine Peterson character for the Netflix series The Staircase.
The genius of the film is that Todd Haynes doesn't come at this couple with a moral angle. In fact, he gives us plenty of time with them before we're fed what their crime was, allowing us to develop a certain level of understanding before the aperture opens and we see more and more.
What we get is Moore's Gracie concerned with how she might be presented, particularly as she and Joe have constructed so fairy-tale a love story around their harsher reality, and Portman's actress chipping away at Gracie's facade. Moore and Portman are superb, a master class in the acting process and in the construction of character, meaning both these real-life actresses and this film, and in the meta process within it for the fake movie-within-a-movie.
But the film's revelation is Riverdale actor Charles Melton as Gracie's naive husband. Not only does he hold his own against these powerhouse Oscar-winning actresses, but he constructs his own fine and sad performance.
There's also a fine performance from Cory Michael Smith, Oedipal menace behind his eyes, as Gracie's son from her first marriage, very interested in any attention from Elizabeth, the actress playing his mother.
Joe has spent so long in this love story that he doesn't remember that he was the victim in the crime.
Haynes makes complex films that reward on rewatching. Here he is daring us to think a little deeper about how our Tiger Kings and our Carol Baskins play themselves, and are played.
May December plays out like one of these 3D pictures you need to unfocus your eyes to see, revealing more only after it is all taken in.
