He’s the sobering remind that behind all the intrigue and scandal and fun of the quest for truth, if we accept the reality of “May December” as some sort of reality, then we have to accept the tragedy of Joe. He will break your heart and not because of any huge Oscar-reel moment, but all the small ones leading up to the very earned tears. But that they are great is not the big surprise of the film: Melton is. It’s wonderfully fun to watch what they do, how they can make even the most basic of interactions slyly subversive and catty and how both try to maintain control over every conversation. And Moore and Portman are electric in their scenes together, masterful performers whose characters are similarly performing for one another. We are, however, treated to some of her private moments that only Joe sees - her fragility, her delusions, her naivete. Just when you think you have a handle on something, she subverts it. Gracie is harder to grasp, but she will keep the audience, and Elizabeth, on their toes for the duration. You can almost imagine Elizabeth Barry’s deeply untruthful press tour for the film. Joe reminds her that it’s their actual life. It is a deliriously fun and unnerving send-up of both stardom and an actor’s process. Portman plays Elizabeth as impishly manipulative, utilizing the full power of her character’s celebrity and its effect on people to get intimate confessions. She is wildly driven to get to some sort of truth about Gracie, running around town like an investigative journalist interviewing everyone she can. We brace for something serious and dramatic as the camera zooms in on Moore: “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs,” she says.Įlizabeth isn’t just there to watch them eat dinner and ask some questions. Early in the film, Gracie is preparing for Elizabeth’s arrival and opens her refrigerator when the score dips. He layers that with a boldly dramatic score, borrowed from the past (the late French composer Michel Legrand’s theme from “The Go-Between”) and brilliantly deployed in both comedic and serious ways. We already knew that Haynes was a master of melodrama, with films like “Carol” and “Far From Heaven,” but in “May December” he gestures to the aesthetics of ripped-from-the-tabloids Lifetime fare. Is one lying? Are both? Who can we trust? Who do we like? Does it matter? Elizabeth responds that she wants her to “feel seen and known.” Both Moore and Portman are smiling sweetly, on perfectly polite stranger behavior, but it is also deeply uncomfortable. Gracie tells Elizabeth, on their first meeting, that she just wants her to tell the story right. There have been cheap, seemingly exploitative movies made about them before, which we get brief glimpses of.
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