May December (2023)
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May December Movie Review
May December is a 2023 drama film directed by Todd Haynes and starring Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore and Charles Melton. It’s a messy, uncomfortable movie.
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“Insecure people are very dangerous, aren’t they?“
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It follows an actress who travels to Georgia to meet and study the life of the controversial woman she is set to play in a film – the woman being infamous for her 23-year-long relationship with her husband, which began when he was just 13 years old. Apparently based on a true story, this is a very uncomfortable, difficult story about a woman who groomed a man when he was just 13 years old, making his life miserable in the process.
My main issue with this film is Haynes’ directing as the director failed to decide on what tone he wanted for this particular tale. It is at times suitably dark and dramatic, but way too often the movie straddled the line between dramatic and comedic, the latter constituting rather campy acting and scenarios that simply did not fit this very difficult subject at hand.
In a film that starred Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, it is Charles Melton who actually emerged as the best performer of the three. He was fittingly heartbreaking in a very difficult role. He was believable and very effective throughout, making for one of the best supporting performances of the year.
As for the two actresses, I did not quite care for their work here. Moore cried a whole lot and her performance was one full of unhinged emotionality while Portman was way too campy and over-the-top for my taste. The entire character did not work for me as she derailed the bigger and more important story with the artifice theme not being explored well at all.
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May December is definitely well shot, very well scored and pretty confidently edited, but the directing from Haynes was not great and this movie is far from his best works. The dialogue is pretty good and the dramatic scenes worked, but the uneasy tone made me even more uncomfortable than was necessary and this difficult subject matter deserved much better cinematic treatment.
In a movie that starred Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, it was actually Charles Melton who emerged as the best performer of the three. He was excellent while the two actresses were far from great. This film deals with the difficult subject of grooming and whenever it was more dramatic, it was quite effective. However, it also tries to be funny and campy, which made this already tough subject even more uncomfortable to watch. It’s a very well made, but tonally uneasy film where Todd Haynes never quite found the proper way to tell this story.
My Rating – 3.5
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