May December: Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore’s acting lesson (review)
An actress comes to spend time with the one she will play on screen: a woman, whose love at first sight for a minor fascinated the country 20 years earlier.
We know it. Todd Haynes loves actresses… who do him well. Next to Julianne Moore (with whom he has collaborated regularly since Safe almost 30 years ago), Natalie Portman joins the impressive list (Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Michelle Williams, Kate Winslet, Anne Hathaway…) of those that the filmmaker has directed on the big and small screen. And this time, inspired by the affair of the math teacher Mary Kay Letourneau (who hit the headlines at the end of the 90s), he organizes a face to face, a duo/duel between Elizabeth on one side , an actress who is preparing to shoot her next film and the other, Gracie, the woman she will play on screen, including, years earlier, her love story with a 13-year-old teenager (who has since become her husband and the father of several of her children) earned her a stay in prison.
Filmmaker of heartbreaking but enveloping melodies, Haynes signs with May December a film that contrasts with its habits, in a sarcastic and surly atmosphere as desired. Both Elizabeth, often falsely honeyed, in search of the truth for her role, seems to take a perverse pleasure in undermining, with each of her falsely innocent questions, the family harmony brandished as a standard by Gracie as if to convince herself that her love story is more beautiful, stronger and more solid than all the others, despite (or thanks to?) the obstacles put in its path.
No character is here to be saved, too petty Machiavellian to achieve any greatness or too low to arouse anything other than pity. There is a side Ugly, dirty and nasty – in ultra-polished mode – in this dive into troubled waters where Elizabeth gets closer to Gracie’s husband until a scene of lovemaking that is more clinical than sensual, symbol of this sticky atmosphere also created by the lighting of Christopher Blauvelt – in the antipodes of the formal beauty of his work on First cow by Kelly Reichardt – to stick to the world of tabloids that Gracie has long been on the front page of.
This bias, this stylistic effect which takes up a lot of space (use of zooms, this idea of a camera which wants to scratch the varnish of appearances…) in fact creates a distance with its characters and limits the ability of this film to stand out. deploy emotionally. But accompanied musically by the theme created by Michel Legrand for The messenger by Losey (Palme d’Or 71) – music carrying a playful irony – Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore deploy themselves there with incredible power, finesse and intensity. A lesson in acting, from the first to the last shot.
By Todd Haynes. With Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton… Duration: 1h53. Released January 24, 2024
