Mallory's Camera

Todd Haynes’ remarkable May December is a film about boundaries and what happens when they dissolve.

Its plot is simple: Twenty or so years after the events that catapult Gracie Atherton & her now-husband Joe Yoo into the tabloids, an actress who will be playing Gracie in an indie movie comes to the town where Gracie and her family are living to observe Gracie for a week.

Gracie (Julianne Moore) is meant to be Mary Kay Letourneau, the elementary school teacher who in 1997 initiated a sexual relationship with one of her sixth-grade students, went to prison for it, gave birth to two of her underage paramour’s children in prison, and eventually married the student.

The couple separated in 2020—the same year that an unnamed source close to Vili Fualaau, the 12-year-old boy now all grown up and 36, confided to People Magazine that Vili had had second thoughts about the relationship and was now prepared to acknowledge that the relationship had been unhealthy from the start.

So! Was Mary Kay Letourneau a pedophile, a child rapist, a female Humbert Humbert? Or was she, as she claimed, a woman who'd found a soul mate and a true love that defied America's puritanical norms?

May December explores that question but doesn’t have a definitive answer.

The film is more interested in asking the question: What attracts people—both as voyeurs and as reenactors—to explore morally grey areas?

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In interviews, Haynes has cited the Ingmar Bergman film Persona as a core influence on May December. It’s been many decades since I watched Persona, but I still remember how unsettling the movie was, how between the mute actress and the nurse who’s been charged with helping the actress get her voice back, it is the nurse who is the weaker personality and is ultimately subsumed by the actress’s persona.

Here’s the once-upon-a-time-in-the-1960s famous still from Persona. Live Ullman, the actress, the dominant personality, is on the right:



May December contains a similar fusion of personalities as the actress Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) begins to imitate more and more of Gracie’s traits in the week she spends observing. Elizabeth’s mirroring, though, involves a conscious suspension of her own persona. In one of May December’s strongest scenes, Gracie makes Elizabeth up with her own cosmetics; in another, Gracie and Elizabeth sit side-by-side in a dressing room, and an artfully placed mirror makes it seem as though Elizabeth is talking to two Gracies. Elizabeth explores the pet store stockroom where Gracie and Joe first had sex, mimes tentative passion while sitting on a grimy step. Elizabeth begins to mimic Gracie’s speech patterns, including a distinctive almost-lisp. Elizabeth has sex with Joe.

It’s not really clear which woman is the alpha during the week they spend together, but Elizabeth has the actress privilege and, therefore, the Last Word long-term advantage. In the very last scene of May December (SPOILER-SPOILER-SPOILER), she insists on shooting a scene where Gracie grooms Joe over and over and over again.

The other cinematic influence on May December is Joseph Losey’s 1971 film The Go-Between, also a meditation on a child’s innocence lost through adults' careless cruelty and one of my very favorite films of all time.

Interestingly, Haynes does not use the plot or any of the cinematic allusions from The Go-Between; he uses its score—which happens to be a very dramatic, portentous, and haunting piano melody composed by Michel Legrand.

Legrand’s score is often used for comic effect—as in one of the earliest scenes in the film when its notes crescendo as Gracie declares, “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs." Cut to 30 hot dogs on a grill.

That’s another thing about May December—it’s often darkly hilarious in its opening scenes.

But by the end of the film, the deflective, dissociative humor has vanished, and the crescendoing and descending notes of Legrand’s music make it quite clear you are witnessing a tragedy.

Haynes is really a genius at doing this sort of thing. In a way, his use of Legrand’s Go-Between score is highly reminiscent of his very first film, which was a life of Karen Carpenter, using Barbie dolls instead of human actors. The concept is very funny when you first see it. But by the end of the 40-minute movie, you’ve forgotten you’re watching dolls, you’re entirely caught up in the tragedy of Karen Carpenter’s story.



Apart from watching May December, yesterday was not a terrific day.

I am consumed with anxiety on every possible level, and I have no way of determining how much (if, indeed, any) of the anxiety is justifiable and how much is not.

It’s deeply unpleasant.

I feel very alone.

And worthless.

I’m holding it together, but it’s not easy.