May December is the ninth feature film by Todd Haynes (the tenth including the documentary about the Velvet Underground) and had its world premiere in the international competition of Cannes Film Festival 2023)
A famous actress decides to spend some time with the real protagonist of the biopic she is about to play. This woman had made headlines 25 years earlier for having an affair with a 13-year-old boy, who would later become her husband and father of two of her four children. The star’s research will turn into a cat-and-mouse game with her antagonist.
Todd Haynes continues his reshaping of the classic American noir and meló
He combines the two genres to shape a psychological thriller with the atmosphere and look of a 1970s film. From the soundtrack to the cinematography, passing through the icy sets of the house of the woman at the centre of the investigation, who is anything but above suspicion, Haynes stages a game of mirrors in which the figures of the actress and the object of study continually interchange and transfigure, mixing supposed reality with real fiction.
May December examines the relationship between cinema and truth
It reflects that nothing is what it seems and everything is appearance. At the centre of the events are the two magnificent performers competing for excellence: Natalie Portman, the actress, and Julianne Moore, the woman of mystery. Around them revolve characters who tell the story according to their point of view.
READ ALSO: Zurich Film Festival Gala Screenings announced
A Citizen Kane-like structure further thickens the plot of this complex film in which the audience must grasp details that are not always obvious. If lost, the risk is to remain stuck in the middle, undecided about the story’s direction. It is the charm and the tiny limit of “May December” that nonetheless confirms Todd Haynes as a master filmmaker in the contemporary panorama, never bland and always ready to surprise.
It is better to be bewildered by films of this level than tediously reassured by stories that are all too easy to read, watchable, and beautiful but do not open windows on other, often obscure, worlds.