150 Word Review: 'May December' (2023)
Mirror, mirror, on the wall...
May December is a disorienting, genre-disrupting house of mirrors. Is it a Hollywood send-up? A prestige movie of the week? A melodrama with low blood pressure? Yes.
Natalie Portman's Elizabeth is a famous actor shadowing a notorious real-life pedophile she's portraying in a movie. Her character is also a stand-in for modern, screen-addicted audiences. Director Todd Hayne has thoughts on our casually voyeuristic culture. Elizabeth watches and comments but doesn't understand what she sees. She's not as smart as her parents say.
Julianne Moore is Gracie, an emotionally volatile ex-con who married the child she seduced. Gracie is a living riptide, pulling everyone under, including her family. Charles Melton is remarkable as Gracie's kind-hearted half-Korean husband who struggles to accept that his childhood was stolen. Moore and Portman are passive-aggressively pitch-perfect as imperial white women. But it's a mismatched catfight. May December follows multiple gut punches with a masterful punchline.
The only punchline is that the child she seduced had his childhood stolen and now he’s going to be responsible for her in her old age.
That is sick, not masterful.
Ugh. Why did I waste my time watching this hoping for a somewhat happy ending?