May December

 

Director Todd Haynes (Safe, Far From Heaven, Carol) does not gravitate toward easy subjects. His films are complex; his characters multi-dimensional and often unaware of all of their dimensions.

In his latest picture May December, Natalie Portman plays Elizabeth, an actress who is preparing for a role based on a Savannah woman named Gracie (Julianne Moore) who was imprisoned more than 25 years before for having an affair with a seventh-grader. Gracie subsequently gave birth to one of their children while she was incarcerated. She eventually married the boy, Joe, played by Charles Melton as an adult, and they appear to have built a life of quiet respectability when Elizabeth arrives.

As we watch the actress explore her subject in these suburban environs, we become aware, slowly, that this benign domesticity might be masking anger and repression.

Gracie runs a baking enterprise out of her home; Joe is an X-ray technician. Their two younger children (Gabriel Chung and Elizabeth Yu) are graduating from high school and their older daughter (Piper Curda) is returning from college for the event. The more Elizabeth is in their company -- watching and asking questions -- the more it becomes apparent nothing is as it seems; motives, including Elizabeth's, are murky; questions are raised but not answered.

All of this contributes to the film's atmosphere of unease, which is conveyed especially well in the exchanges between Moore and Portman. Is Gracie a fool for love or a predator? And what will Elizabeth do with the answer?