Update: The film May December will be broadcast on Canal+ on October 22, 2024 at 9:10 pm. Don't miss this opportunity to discover Todd Haynes' captivating drama.
The screening of a Todd Haynes film at the Cannes Film Festival is always an event - as was the case with his sumptuous Carol, screened 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 latest feature.
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 provoked by their first kiss, between two cooking 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 in junior high school. The story is the (real) one 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 have passed, the gossip has died down - Gracie remains a town attraction, almost a shameful source of 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. Not very forthcoming about the affair, Gracie once again lets others speak for (and about) her.
Quiet Joe struggles to find his words, stares at the ground 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's the butterfly, she's 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 affair that Elizabeth watches while dressed as her model, and which appears to be 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.
New films and series on streaming platforms in November 2024
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New films and series on streaming platforms in November 2024
Streaming: what are we watching this Thursday November 21, 2024 on Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ platforms?
