Savannah is the oldest city in Georgia – the “peach state” and one of the centers of southerners during the Civil War. TV actress Elizabeth comes here to prepare for a new movie (Natalie Portman). He wants to meet former pet store employee Gracie, the prototype of his hero. (Julianne Moore) raped a boy named Joe, his son’s school friend, 23 years ago. He was 36 at the time, and she was only 13. Public interest in the family has since waned. Now, after a prison sentence and many years of a seemingly happy marriage, Gracie and Joe (Charles Melton) is preparing the youngest of his three children for graduation. But Elizabeth’s arrival threatens to disrupt the status quo.
“May – December” is not the most common English expression for a romantic union in which one partner is much older than the other (“September” is sometimes used instead of “December”). In the context of the film by Todd Haynes, author of the books “Velvet Goldmine” and “Carol,” this statement sounds quite cynical: It’s one thing for 40-year-olds to sleep with 20-year-olds (dubious, but “okay”), and quite another when it comes to the abuse of minors. This was done on purpose: the film somehow infiltrates the territory of a comedy (black, of course, but a comedy nonetheless), where the camp knob is expertly turned up to just slightly above average, and Julianne Moore has a hilarious lisp (you can’t hear it in the dub).
The effect is exactly the opposite. The funnier it is at that moment, the scarier it becomes the next moment when what happened weighs heavily on the brain and a shameful aftertaste follows it. Such a contradictory mixture of emotions is perhaps familiar to everyone (that is, everyone) who has at least once noticed that he is interested in the yellow press.
Sami Birch, who started her film career working in casting and now received an Oscar nomination for her first feature-length screenplay, was allegedly inspired, firstly, by tabloid culture in general, and secondly by the scandal involving teacher Mary Kay Letourneau and her student (and later her husband and the father of her children). Willy Fualaau first raped when he was in the sixth grade.
Perhaps this hierarchy also explains the reluctance to consult those involved in the story, which the media followed so voraciously from beginning to end. As a result, humanity is faced with a colorful choice, ranging from People magazine covers to a parody sketch of the “Saturday Night Live” program. The plot of “December May” also did not appear out of nowhere, if desired, the prototype can be found in Portman’s heroine: in 2000, the film “American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story” was released in the USA. Network channel. Did her leading lady there, “Carlito’s Way” star Penelope Ann Miller, not visit Letourneau, just talk to her on the phone? (The actress can most recently be seen as the mother of the main character in Ryan Murphy’s “Dahmer. Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”; in a sense, it’s from the same opera.).
Such vultures interestingly rhyme with the quotes that form the basis of the film. Haynes says a major inspiration for her was Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, an existential psychodrama about a silenced actress and the babysitter who accompanies her on a cruise.
In the local anxious happiness (here not according to Haynes’s words, but according to his own feelings), Pedro Almodóvar’s paintings are characterized by intense emotionality. The film’s score is by Michel Legrand, reinvented by Brazilian Greek Marcelo Zarvos and originally written for Joseph Losey’s costume melodrama “The Go-Between,” based on LP Hartley’s novel of the same name. Victorian England seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old student from a middle-class family (In 1971 the film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes; more than half a century later, its May-December premiere took place there).
But all this would not make such a striking impression (which forced us to include this image in the photo). List of the best movies of 2023Also included was Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla.” taken on a similar subject– now you can catch him in movies without his outstanding acting performances.
With Portman and Moore, everything is more or less clear and upfront, but the main star here is the Riverdale graduate (we wrote about why this is a great series) Here) Melton was not lost against the background of the giants of the frame. His role becomes the supporting structure of the picture: he plays a 13-year-old boy who finds himself in the body of a 36-year-old man (that is, the same age as Gracie at the time), a father. Someone who has already raised three children but was not allowed to grow up herself. This seems like the worst part of the whole crime. A stolen childhood that will never return, even after the caterpillar finally emerges from the cocoon and transforms into a Red Book butterfly that escapes extinction.
Release date in Russia: February 29, 2024
Duration: 117 minutes
Manager: Todd Haynes
Casting: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton
Where to see: to the cinema