Express at Cannes: Moore and Portman’s unsettling duet May December is a rewarding watch

The film opens with well-known actor Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) turning up by appointment at their house in Savannah, Georgia, in which Gracie and Joe live with their younger children. On the face of it, they appear to be used to each other in the way long-married couples are. But as Elizabeth starts to dig deeper, in an attempt to understand the intricacies of this most unusual couple, old resentments start coming up.

At one point, when Gracie has indulged in one of her hysterical crying fits, and Joe has finished consoling her, the two get into one of those conversations which threatens to uncover the lies people tell themselves in order to keep living. He accuses her of taking advantage of him when he was literally a child; she lashes out and tells him not to lay it on her, and instantly we know a little more about the two of them. That she is a woman who’s never really grown up, and doesn’t want to; and that he’s a man who was never allowed to be a child, and has had to grow up much too soon.

As Gracie starts letting Elizabeth into her life — learning how to pot plants, baking cakes for neighbours, watching over the kids — we see that Elizabeth isn’t as milk-and-honey as she wants to be perceived as. We see her asking questions which are too close to the bone, targeting Gracie’s ex-husband and estranged son, and adopting a too-familiar, near-flirtatious tone with Joe, which inevitably leads to complications.

May December is clearly based on a real-life occurrence in 1997 America, in which school-teacher Mary Kay Letourneou went to jail after she pled guilty to the statutory rape of a minor (the boy was 12 going on 13), and married him after she came out. What would have been truly interesting was to know what Joe really feels inside, of the feelings that he’s kept bottled within. But Haynes is more interested in the two women. In a great scene — the two stand side-by-stand in front of a mirror, with Gracie showing Elizabeth how she makes up her face — we see that they are similar in the way they take without compunction, without really giving anything back.

Just for Moore and Portman squaring off with each other, dropping truth bombs, May December becomes worth your time.