Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. This series of "critic's notes" is chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connect them to the riches of Scarecrow's collection.
I just Googled the line "I don't think we have enough hot dogs" on the off chance that someone online might have posted this bit of dialogue from May December and I could check its accuracy, only to learn that apparently everyone who's written about the film has already jumped on this signature moment—it may in fact already be a meme. So, never mind. Still, this line (from the screenplay by Samy Burch) is a real Haynes touch: The film's central character, a Barbara Billingsley-style TV mom/child molester, prepares an impeccable backyard barbecue but has a moment of panic as she peers into her battleship-sized refrigerator. Then comes the line. Aided by Julianne Moore's out-of-it reading, a melodramatic zoom, and a rich musical flourish, the words land like something from a John Waters picture. But this is a movie that wants to be taken seriously.
Haynes is a postmodern artist, so mixing up tones and styles, and importing elements from pre-existing material, is his specialty. The music for May December is mostly taken from Michel Legrand's score for The Go-Between, for instance. When he's on his game, as in Safe (one of the greatest end-of-the-20th-century movies), he can hit a really superb groove. And there are superb things in May December, piercing observations about small cruelties and social taboos and a culture that revels in shallowness. Despite the best efforts of an engaged group of actors, these issues remain somewhat academic throughout, except when they seem simply tasteless.
The tasteless part is the movie's use of the Mary Kay LeTourneau scandal as its very clear source, even as it indulges in some hand-wringing about how American entertainment exploits painful human subjects such as this. The LeTourneau character, Gracie (played by Moore), is now in her fifties; it's been 20 years since she first had sex with seventh-grader Joe (Charles Melton), and their children are now heading off to college. A TV actress, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman, excellent) is hanging around, observing Gracie and "researching" her role, in ways that almost always appear predatory. Gracie's previous family still lives here in Savannah, so they cross paths with Gracie's current family, and Elizabeth, in supremely awkward scenes. The movie's breakout actor, by the way, is not Charles Melton, but Cory Michael Smith, who blisters through a couple of charged scenes as Gracie's adult son from her first marriage. For her part, Moore struck me as too knowing for this role; I wondered whether someone like Melanie Griffith might've better captured the fantasy world inside Gracie's head.
It's a movie made by smart people, but it feels half-digested. In a scene conveying the shooting of Elizabeth's project, she fondles a snake while playing Gracie in full seduction mode with an actor portraying Joe. It is silly and obvious. And yet May December itself spends time on the real Joe's hobby of raising butterflies, which must pass through their larval stage before evolving into their full colors. Silly and obvious, you might say—unless Haynes is being so obvious that it's part of his postmodern melodrama. A snake eating its own tail, as it were.
December 8, 2023
