The Reel Review
Twenty years after a highly-publicized, scandalous sexual relationship between a married woman and 13-year-old boy gripped the nation, the now married couple and their two high school-aged children must relive the trauma all over again when an actress arrives to research a film about their past. Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore star in this Netflix dramedy.
The story from director Todd Haynes (Dark Waters, Far From Heaven) is loosely based on Mary Kay Letourneau, who got pregnant (while married) by her 12-year-old sixth grade student whom she married after being released from prison. Haynes uses his now familiar 1950s-era Technicolor palate to add more surrealness to this unsettlingly provocative tale.
There is a strange, tense vibe throughout the entire film, as though things are always… off. Portman is chameleon-like in her portrait of an actress who will literally do anything to inhabit her character, a predator becoming a predator, with Moore channeling an emotionally weak, naïve woman/child to Charles Melton’s Joe, who became a father as a child, and feels like a non-entity in his own home. May December isn’t so much a story as it is a series of disturbing character portraits, set to a melodramatic, piano-heavy score.
REEL FACTS
• Natalie Portman brought the script to director Todd Haynes as a possible collaboration. He suggested his muse Julianne Moore whom he’s done four prior movies with, for the role opposite Portman.
• Julianne Moore did not notice Natalie Portman was mimicking her mannerisms until later in filming.
• Mary Kay Letourneau died in 2020 at the age of 58. She left her estate to husband Vili Fualaau and their two daughters.
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