May December

May December is a 2023 American black comedy drama film directed by Todd Haynes from a screenplay by Samy Burch, based on a story by Burch and Alex Mechanik. It stars Natalie Portman as an actress who travels to meet and study the life of Gracie (Julianne Moore), the controversial woman she is set to play in a film—a woman infamous for the 24-year-long relationship with her husband Joe (Charles Melton), which began when he was 13 years old and she was 36.
The film was announced in June 2021, with Portman and Moore joining the cast. Filmed in 23 days in mid-2022 in Savannah, Georgia, it premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2023, where Netflix acquired the North American distribution rights.
May December was released in select theaters in the United States on November 17, 2023, before streaming on Netflix on December 1, 2023. It received critical acclaim and various accolades, including four nominations at the 81st Golden Globe Awards and a Best Original Screenplay nomination at the 96th Academy Awards, and was chosen by the American Film Institute as one of the top ten films of 2023.
In 2015, actress Elizabeth Berry arrives in Savannah, Georgia, to research her upcoming role in an independent film. Elizabeth will be playing Gracie Atherton-Yoo, who, in 1992 at the age of 36, was caught raping 13-year-old Joe Yoo, a schoolmate of her son Georgie, at the pet store where they both worked. During a prison sentence, Gracie gave birth to Joe's child. Twenty-three years later, Gracie and Joe are married with three children: Honor, who is at college, and twins Charlie and Mary, who are about to graduate from high school.
Elizabeth interviews Gracie and Joe about their relationship. Visiting the pet store where the couple met, Elizabeth sees the stock room where Gracie and Joe were caught having sex and reenacts the scene alone. She speaks with Tom, Gracie's first husband, and Georgie, who is now a musician, and Gracie's defense lawyer. They view Gracie in varying ways, depicting her as naïve and passive, but also show how destructive her actions were.
Joe engages in a private text conversation with an unnamed friend who shares his hobby of rearing monarch butterflies. At one point, he proposes they take a vacation together, but she rebuffs him by reminding him he is married. At the accommodation she is staying in, Elizabeth talks with the film's director and suggests the film cast a "sexier" actor for the 13-year-old character of Joe after she views auditions of prospective co-stars.
Elizabeth participates in a Q&A at the twins' high school and discusses the intimacy actors and crew members feel when shooting a sex scene. When Elizabeth says she enjoys playing morally ambiguous characters, Mary is visibly offended.
At home, Charlie shares a cannabis joint with Joe, who reveals to his son that he has never tried cannabis before. High, Joe has a breakdown and weeps in Charlie's arms.
The family, accompanied by Elizabeth, celebrate the twins' graduation at a restaurant, where they have an awkward encounter with Tom, Georgie, and the rest of Gracie's old family. Georgie proposes that Elizabeth get him a job as a music supervisor on the film in exchange for details about Gracie's life; he claims he read Gracie's diary and discovered that her older brothers sexually abused her. Georgie also threatens that if not given the job, he will disparage the film to the press when it is released. Elizabeth gets a ride home from Joe.
Elizabeth invites Joe to her accommodation, where he gives her a letter Gracie wrote him early in their relationship. The two have sex, and Elizabeth tells Joe that he still has time to start a new life. Joe leaves once she refers to his experiences as a "story," saying that story is "his life." After he leaves, Elizabeth reads aloud the letter Joe gave her, adapting Gracie's mannerisms and lisps as she does so. Joe tearfully confronts Gracie about the start of their relationship, wondering whether he was "too young." Gracie insists he seduced her, and repeatedly asks who was really in control.
The morning of graduation, one of Joe's butterflies emerges from its chrysalis. Later, the whole family watches Charlie and Mary graduate while Joe weeps alone in the crowd. As Elizabeth prepares to leave, Gracie tells her Georgie fabricated the story of abuse by her brothers.
On set of the film, which is at this point revealed to be a low-budget and fairly low-quality production, Elizabeth films multiple takes of a scene depicting Gracie seducing Joe at the pet store. While the director is satisfied, she asks to film another take, insisting that the scene is "getting more real".
Screenwriter Samy Burch outlined the script with her husband, Alex Mechanik, and completed the screenplay on Memorial Day, 2019. Producer Jessica Elbaum came onboard after reading the screenplay. In June 2021, it was announced that Portman and Moore were cast in the film. Portman recruited Todd Haynes to direct. In September 2022, Melton joined the cast. In January 2023, it was reported that Piper Curda, Elizabeth Yu, and Gabriel Chung had joined the cast.
Principal photography took place in Savannah, Georgia, and wrapped after 23 days in November 2022. Haynes's longtime collaborator Edward Lachman was initially going to serve as cinematographer, but was replaced by Christopher Blauvelt after injuring his hip. The script, which is set in Savannah, was originally set in Camden, Maine.
Haynes said the film is partly inspired by the Ingmar Bergman films Persona (1966) and Winter Light (1963). While not a direct adaptation, he also stated that the Mary Kay Letourneau scandal "became very, very helpful to get very specific about the research, and we learned things from that relationship".
Marcelo Zarvos's score for the film is an adaptation and reorchestration of Michel Legrand's music for The Go-Between. Haynes originally played Legrand's score on set and during editing for inspiration until eventually the team "ended up embracing so many aspects of the original score that Marcelo adapted and added original music to it and then re-orchestrated it." Legrand was credited along with Zarvos.
In February 2023, Sky Cinema acquired the UK distribution rights. The film was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered on May 20, 2023. In May 2023, Netflix acquired the North American distribution rights at the Marché du Film for $11 million. The film also screened as the "Opening Night Film" at the 2023 New York Film Festival on September 29.
The film was released in select U.S. theaters on November 17, 2023, before streaming on Netflix in the U.S. and Canada on December 1. It was released by Sky Cinema in the United Kingdom on December 8.
May December received critical acclaim. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 91% of 322 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "Swaddling its difficult fact-based story in a blanket of campy humor, May December is a seductively discomfiting watch." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 86 out of 100, based on 53 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
In his review following its Cannes premiere, Peter Debruge of Variety called May December an "endlessly fascinating movie" and added, "As layered and infinitely open-to-interpretation as any of [Haynes's] films, it's also the most generous and direct [...] The potential for passion, transformation and subversion hangs heavy in the air". David Ehrlich of IndieWire called the film "a heartbreakingly sincere piece of high camp that teases real human drama from the stuff of tabloid sensationalism", and praised Melton's "well-modulated and eventually rather moving performance" and Moore's "predictably sensational, soft-hard performance". The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw found the film "amusing and elegant [...] delivered with a cool, shrewd precision by Todd Haynes" and described Portman and Moore's performances as containing "a potent frenmity".
Bilge Ebiri of Vulture called May December "very funny and light on its feet, but also a deeply uncomfortable movie", writing that Haynes "uses the trappings of camp to draw attention to the disconnect between what's happening onscreen and our response to it", and concluding: "It feels at times like the director himself [is] looking for the right tone with which to tell this story. He doesn't know exactly how to feel about all this. So he feels all the things, and makes sure we do, too."
Rolling Stone's CT Jones praised Melton's performance, noting his skill and physicality in the role. "It's an inscrutable well of interpersonal grievances, power imbalances, and history, a perfect breeding ground for sharp work from screen icons Portman and Moore, the latter in her fifth film with Haynes," they wrote. "But while the two are competing to see how much cringe and humor one can conceivably fit into a movie about sexual assault and grooming, there's Melton off to the side, quietly stealing the show."
Carlos Boyero of El País wrote that Todd Haynes's approach to telling the story "makes it petty, and pointlessly pretentious".
Filmmakers Robert Eggers, Kitty Green, Bill Hader, Don Hertzfeldt, Laurel Parmet and Jeff Rowe cited May December as among their favorite films of 2023.
May December was ranked tenth in Sight and Sound's list of the 50 best films of 2023, out of 363 films nominated by 106 British and international participants. In France, Cahiers du Cinéma placed it second on their top 10 films of 2024. Some critics opined that there was an omission of acting nominations for Portman, Melton and Moore at the 96th Academy Awards, despite being nominated at other major awards associations. EJ Dickson of Rolling Stone cited the Academy's pattern to exclude actors of Asian descent and their lack of acknowledgement to performers under the age of 40 as the reasons Melton was not nominated.