It’s Just What Grown Ups Do: the Disturbing Grey Areas of May December
A real-life scandal inspires this complex drama that’s been described as “endlessly fascinating.”
good.film
a year ago
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Why should I see May December?
Besides the perverse story and gripping central performances, this is a movie that - like the best kinds of art - leaves you with more questions than answers.
What is the movie May December about?
May December explores social causes like Family & Community & Mental Health
It premiered at Cannes, stars two Oscar winners and was snapped up by Netflix for $11 million, but the premise behind May December is no easy sell. In today’s desperate-not-to-offend media landscape, it might even be a miracle this story ever made it to the screen.
In a nutshell, a famous actress (Elizabeth, played by Natalie Portman) comes to the home of married couple Gracie and Joe (Julianne Moore and Charles Melton) to study the pair and see how they tick. Why? Because Elizabeth is set to play Gracie in a new movie, examining what made them fall in love… when Gracie was 36 and Joe was just 13.
You read that right - Joe was in the seventh grade when they began their affair, leading to a national tabloid scandal and prison time for Gracie. Nearly 25 years later, Elizabeth has lots of probing questions for the couple - who the community claim are still head over heels.
Is May December based on a true story?
It sure is. In 1996, US teacher Mary Kay Letourneau began a sexual affair with Vili Fualaau, a 12 year old boy in her sixth-grade class. The case made national news; Letourneau was jailed for six years. After she was released, the couple married and raised two daughters. According to Wikipedia, Letourneau “considered her relationship with Fualaau to be eternal and endless.” Fualaau was by her side when she died from cancer in 2020.
The Mary Kay Letourneau case clearly inspired May December (the first feature for Portman’s production outfit, Mountain A), but only as “a jumping-off point”. Writer Samy Burch explains, “It occurred to me that their children were probably adults now, and it conjured this idea of an empty nest… this home with these two people that have gone through so much. I knew I wanted to make it a fictionalised version of a couple like that.”
Why is May December being described as “camp”?
While the main characters in May December aren’t openly gay, director Todd Haynes is, and his lush and stylized past work like 2002’s Far From Heaven and 2015’s Carol have led to his name becoming entwined with the New Queer Cinema movement.
His latest is no different, with a dreamy-hazy look and melodramatic piano score (borrowed from 1971’s torrid romance The Go-Between). Haynes creates moments of intentionally campy contrast for effect: when Gracie peers into their fridge and realises “we need more hot dogs”, piano keys crash as the camera zooms in. Vox describes it as “the kind of overly dramatic stinger we might find in a ’90s made-for-TV movie.”
It’s not parody, though: Haynes is giving us Gracie’s worldview, where drama is exaggerated, and every tiny ripple is a potential tsunami. We laugh, then snap back to dark reality. Another camp touch is Joe’s pretty butterflies, lovingly kept in soft net cages and carried on tiptoes. Aside from the obvious “metamorphosis” metaphor, they’re an allegory for the flimsiness of his marriage. Like their delicate wings, once scratched at, they can be torn to shreds.
How does May December explore immaturity?
Gracie, Joe and Elizabeth’s emotional maturity (or lack of it) is a core theme. From their first dinner together with a curious Elizabeth, Haynes lays clues for us to ponder. Joe is quiet, and Gracie seems somehow vacant. Is she hiding something, or just shallow? Who’s the dominant force of the pair, and how would Elizabeth feel if the genders were reversed? Would she still be intent on studying an older man who seduced a young girl, or would this be more obviously wrong and therefore, somehow less intriguing?
Gracie’s relationship with Joe is henpecky, mildly nagging him about moving his ‘bugs’ from the bedroom, or dragging the smell of barbeque smoke onto the bedsheets. It’s strikingly close to how a mother would be with a teenage son… except of course, they share a bed. It’s a Lolita-in-reverse that feels impossible to process; morally, we’re on unstable ground.
When Elizabeth meets Gracie’s ex-husband, he describes her as “a little bit starry-eyed”, then asks the rhetorical question we’re all thinking: “What would make a 36-year-old woman have an affair with a 7th grader?” Were her actions predatory? Sprung from naivety? Or, as Gracie claims, true love? Arriving at that answer is May December’s core puzzle; perhaps the truth is a combination of all of the above.
For Joe, there’s a fine line between gentle and childlike, and Melton rides it perfectly. At points, it’s as though Joe has been frozen at adolescence. There’s a key moment as his son lights a joint and offers it to Joe, who turns it down, admitting “I’ve never done that.” It’s not about permission or acceptance; it’s about showing us the son has more experience than the father.
Joe’s also trapped; an emotional support to Gracie to an extreme degree. In another campy wink to domestic bliss, Gracie bakes cakes for extra income. As a big customer cancels, she’s hysterically distraught. The scene is an insight into how emotionally unstable Gracie is, and how Joe is her proxy counsellor. The butterflies aren’t the only things he’s tiptoeing around.
It’s heartbreaking to realise that in many ways, Gracie and Joe are less mature than their own teenage children. It’s no accident that the story takes place around their twins’ high school graduation ceremony (another metamorphosis - one that was robbed of Joe as a teen). As writer Samy Burch says, “That felt like a very loaded week to catch up with these characters.”
What does May December have to say about manipulation?
One of the film’s most fascinating (and risky) aspects is how Elizabeth the actress is more predatory than anything we see from Gracie. Famous and entitled, she’s bored by lavish gift baskets and waves off her luxury accom as “quaint”. She insists she wants to play Gracie with authenticity and tell her story truly. Is that the truth, though? Or just empty, Hollywood BS?
Elizabeth tells an acting class (starry eyed with a celebrity in their midst) that when it comes to character, “it’s the moral grey areas that are the most interesting.” It’s clearly a zone she’s comfortable inhabiting. As she spends more time with Gracie, she inevitably gets closer to Joe, and the lines start to blur as she sinks into the mindset of the woman who seduced him.
Elizabeth finds the room where Gracie first abused Joe, then recreates the act, alone. Good research, or too perverse? Later, her eyes light up when Joe gifts her an old love letter from Gracie - the only one he kept, because she urged him to burn the others. It’s really a piece of criminal evidence, but Elizabeth uses it to practise her on-camera monologue.
What Haynes exposes in May December is actually three simultaneous layers of manipulation, and all of them involve people taking advantage of others. There’s Gracie, who obviously did the ultimate version of this to Joe at age 13. There’s Elizabeth, who’s milking Gracie now to get her salacious “story” on screen. And then there’s us.
Yes, we the audience are complicit in this too: we sit in place of the voyeurs who bought the gossip magazines back then, and hungrily want to know now what happened next. Not just ‘want’ to know; NEED to know. Why else would Elizabeth’s movie even be made? Because there’s an appetite for the illicit, and a hunger for the perverse.
It’s why the film’s ‘campy’ touches are so effective. The mundane domesticity of barbeques and baking lull us into happy acceptance, until we remember WHY Gracie and Joe live together and the revulsion hits us again. Haynes is saying, not only should this relationship never have happened - we shouldn’t be here, watching it crumble, witnessing its demise.
What are critics saying about May December?
“An electrifying slow-burn film about fame, trauma, and sensationalised scandals.”
- Maxwell Rabb, Chicago Reader
“The film examines real-world events through the lens of mass media with a wry humour that masks profoundly complex and painful undercurrents of emotion.”
- Brad Hanford, Slant Magazine
“A teasing, ticklish, fascinatingly layered study of our defined identities and the isolation that comes with them.”
- Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph
Fully on board, or disagree big time? We’d love to hear your take. Leave a review to share your thoughts with the good.film community!
So what’s the takeaway from May December?
As if we needed one, May December is a reminder that not everyone on a movie screen is worthy of our adoration. But that doesn’t mean that this story isn’t worth our attention. The film is an examination, not an endorsement.
Simple on the surface, May December is as morally complex as anything you’re likely to see this year. It contains vital messages about victimhood, the lasting effects of sexual trauma, and how the media is complicit in the “celebrification” of crime. It’s brilliantly written and deftly directed, and the three core performances will leave you reeling.
There’s two glorious lines of dialogue in May December that sum up the film better than we ever could. In the first, Gracie describes her hopes for the future, which Elizabeth says “sounds a little naive”. Without even a shred of wounded pride, Gracie bluntly replies: “I am naive.”
The second comes at a key moment that we won’t spoil, where Joe is at his most vulnerable and confused. With a callous lack of empathy (or perhaps pure self-absorption), Elizabeth simply tells him with a shrug, “This is just what grown ups do.” We’re left to wonder - do they?
