May December

Over the past thirty years, Todd Haynes has been one of the leaders of New Queer Cinema. His movies have focused on housewives whose worlds have collapsed (Safe, Far from Heaven, Carol), Bob Dylan (I'm Not There) and forever chemicals (Dark Waters). Now he brings us a fictionalized account of Mary Kay LeTourneau, who infamously raped one of her students and started a family with him.

Haynes regular Julianne Moore plays the LeTourneau character, now getting interviewed by an actress (Natalie Portman) about to play her. The movie deserves credit for Haynes's direction, Moore's and Portman's performances, and the Academy Award-nominated script and cinematography (which deliberately gives the movie a fuzzy look). The downside is the music. It gets played loudly throughout much of the movie, and ends up dominating. This doesn't add anything to the movie, and it distracts from a lot of the action. They really could've done without that.

If you're looking for a good story, then this will be the movie for you, just as long as you remember that it has some of the most obnoxious music ever.

PS: LeTourneau was the daughter of John Schmitz, a congressman from Orange County and member of the John Birch Society.

Before seeing the film I was very curious, I think the story was interesting, along with a renowned director and a very good cast starring Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman and a surprising Charles Melton.

I felt that the film had a lot to exploit with the psychological aspect of the characters, because basically that's where the appeal comes from, an actress who has to analyze the person behind the media character to interpret her.

But I think the script rambles too much and ends up not being very conclusive in all the aspects it tries to cover, its story remains a big what if.

But it's also true, Natalie Portman and Charles Melton were brilliant with their performances, Julianne Moore too. I think it could have been a great movie but it fell short.

In moviemaking, there's subtlety, and then there's subtlety carried too far. In the case of director Todd Haynes's latest, the filmmaker unfortunately indulges himself far too much in the latter. This story of an actress (Natalie Portman) who visits a middle-aged sex offender (Julianne Moore) to prepare for a role she's about to play in a movie about her subject's life never seems to find a footing to stick with and explore. The narrative examines many different aspects of the back story behind the lives of the characters to be portrayed in this pending production without ever really resolving any of them by the time the credits roll. This includes not only the protagonist's reasons for pursuing her once-underage husband (Charles Melton) - actions that got her jailed and made her fodder for countless tawdry tabloid cover stories - but also the nature of the actress's real motivations in conducting such an excessively intense in-depth study of her character. In the process, virtually everyone comes across as somewhat unsavory, and, considering that the truth is never clearly revealed about any of them, it begs the question, why should we care about any of this? The film depicts all of this so subtly that it goes beyond nuance, veering into the realm of enigmatic, thereby further reinforcing the notion of why any of us should care. Ironically, these underplayed elements are in stark contrast to some rather obvious (and terribly trite) symbolism, particularly in images related to themes of transition and transformation. The picture's inconsistent changes in tone don't help, either, vacillating between allegedly serious drama and a seemingly underdeveloped desire to break out as an exercise in full-fledged camp (which, by the way, probably would have made this a much better offering). The script's meandering flow and glacial pacing also don't help, leaving viewers scratching their heads more often than not as to where this story is headed. In the end, all of the foregoing is ultimately quite unfortunate, because there's definite potential in this project, but it's never adequately defined and fleshed out. Leads Moore and (especially) Portman turn in admirable efforts to make this material fly, but they simply don't have enough to work with to make that happen. While there appear to be allusions to themes like the difficulty involved in dealing with long-buried feelings and the fact that we may never be able to adequately grasp the truth behind them (either as outsiders looking in or as active participants in the midst of such dealings), the cryptic handling of those ideas undermines whatever meaningful messages or cinematic value they might have, making all of this seem like just such a big waste of time. Director Haynes has an impressive filmography behind him with such releases as "Poison" (1991), "Far From Heaven" (2002) and "Dark Waters" (2019), but, regrettably, "May December" certainly can't be counted as part of that list.

This movie is based on subtext and doesn't have an overt narrative that progresses like most films.

This movie is about the about one of the worst crimes that exists - CSA (look it up). If you understand it's generational and also very difficult to comprehend this movie will hit you HARD.

That being said, this is a very well done movie about adults who are really just children. They never healed from their traumas and what ensues is a vision of how life is when you ignore that stuff.

I personally have dealt this this crap, and ignoring it is the easy way out...but leads to a unlived life. You have to put the bright lights on it which is what Natalie Portman's character does.

The movie is for people that love film as art - not narrative. It is very well done. All the acting is based on nuanced subtext. The score and the cinematography are also very well done (I love slow zooms...sue me).

Overall it's a great film if you can just absorb the artform of a well paced uncovering of the aftermath of a crime and what happens when you steal innocence. It's a truly remarkable movie that will impact people that understand this dynamic in life. 8/10.

The movie was not what I expected. The aesthethics and the setting were beautiful and all the lead roles did a good job acting their parts HOWEVER everything else was, to put it mildly, underwhelming. The plotline was flat and didn't offer many surprises. Dramatic music and scenes building up the excitement made me long for some sort of a climax, and it just never came. It was basicly 2 hours of waiting, like smelling delicious food but never getting to taste it. The themes were interesting and important and offered a lot of potential for a great movie. The movie was just simply missing the turning point! All in all, I would not see this movie again.