The screening of a Todd Haynes film at the Cannes Festival is always an event - as was the case with his sumptuous Carol, shown in 2015. No New York buildings this time, but the affluent suburb of Savannah, Georgia, to set the scene for May December, the American director's new feature film.
This big house above the river is home to Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), a sexagenarian with soccer-mom looks and a skilled hunter, and Joe (Charles Melton, seen in Riverdale), a young Korean-American half his age - the astonishment of their first kiss, between two baking chipolatas, is as real as it is unexpected.
The two lovebirds made tabloid headlines in the '90s after their affair in the back room of a pet shop was discovered, while the young man, the same age as Gracie's son, was still at college. The story is that (real) of Mary Kay Letourneau, a math teacher in the USA, convicted in 1997 of having sexual relations with a 12-year-old pupil, whom she ended up marrying on leaving prison.
24 years on, the gossip has died down - Gracie remains a town attraction, almost a source of shame and pride, like a historical monument or a church. As a film adaptation of this insane and disturbing story is being prepared, Elizabeth Berry (Nathalie Portman, magnetic), a famous actress, arrives at the heart of this strange family with the (perhaps unhealthy) need and desire to know more, to immerse herself in the role of Gracie she's about to play.
The film is undoubtedly funny, with a very second-degree sense of humor and dialogue finely punctuated with blanks that sometimes underline the absurdity of what has just been said. That's what it takes to bear this story, which is none other than a case of pedo-criminality, without batting an eyelid. But more than themedia affair itself (over-analyzed in the past in the tabloids that Elizabeth consults, mimicking Gracie's expressions), it's in the triple analysis of human relationships that Todd Haynes excels - starting with the pantomimic acting work that gives Nathalie Portman a thrilling masterclass scene in front of drama students.
Through interviews conducted by Elisabeth with those who lived the affair from the inside - Joe included - Todd Haynes deconstructs the couple and sketches, without naming them, the contours of toxicity and the mechanisms of control. Uncommunicative about the affair, Gracie once again lets others speak for (and about) her.
Joe, quiet, struggles to find his words, stares at the floor with his hands in his pockets, and is scolded, like the child he was at the time of the affair, when he drinks too much beer. Wearily, he takes an interest in monarch butterflies, his realization of his condition (the 'you seduced me!' too often heard in this kind of business) metaphorically bringing him out of his chrysalis. If he is the butterfly, she is undeniably the spider.
The porous boundaries between fiction and reality allow for a fine-tuned depiction of the question of doubles and duplicity, as in the TV movie adapted from the case, which Elizabeth watches dressed as her model, and which looks like the dubious beginning of a bad porn movie. And then there are the shots of the two actresses side by side looking at each other in the mirror, right up to the ultimate fusion sequence in which Nathalie Portman, now alone in the frame, imitates her subject to perfection - right down to the slight hair on her tongue.
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