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| Director Todd Haynes |
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| Haynes with actors Charles Melton and Julianne Moore |
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| Haynes and cast on the red carpet at Cannes |
MAY DECEMBER B+ USA (117 mi) 2023 d: Todd Haynes
In Washington State, elementary school teacher Mary Kay Letourneau pleaded guilty to having sex with a sixth-grade student… Miss Letourneau has been branded a sex offender, or as the kids refer to her, ‘The greatest teacher of all time.’ —Norm Macdonald on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update,” 1997, Sound Bites: the week's best TV quotes
Something of a before and after film, with Haynes taking an exclusive look at the aftereffects of a scandalous tabloid story happening decades earlier, inspired by the true story of Mary Kay Letourneau, a 34-year old teacher who pleaded guilty to having sex with a 12-year old 6th grade student, having two children together, actually getting married while she was serving a seven year prison sentence and living together as a family after her release. Twenty years after the scandal gripped the nation, Julianne Moore, in her fifth appearance with this director, stars as Gracie Atherton-Yu, the tabloid fixture who is a registered sex offender living with her husband Joe (Charles Melton), now the same age as Gracie when the incident occurred, along with their three children, Honor (Piper Curda), who is away at college, and two twins, Charlie (Gabriel Chung) and Mary (Elizabeth Yu), who are about to graduate from high school. Adding to the complexity of the story is Hollywood actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman), who comes to visit Gracie and her family to do research as she prepares to play her in an upcoming independent film that attempts to shed light without exploitation. Set in Savannah, Georgia and their seaside home on nearby Tybee Island, it’s a picturesque locale with plenty of Spanish moss hanging from the trees, yet the unsettling family dynamic is explored through the lens of Elizabeth, a supposedly impartial outside observer whose presence only inflames the precarious inner tensions, opening up old wounds, with audiences seemingly eavesdropping into this carefully reconstructed yet scathingly recontextualized world, as Haynes examines our societal obsession with salacious narratives. Written by Samy Burch from a story by Alex Mechanik, premiering in competition at Cannes, with European critics quickly deriding the film while American critics seemed to embrace it, Haynes deftly examines the cracks in the armor of what appears on the surface to be a stable relationship, elevating this into a full-blown melodrama that flirts with black comedy, social farce, psychological thriller, and romantic tragedy, where a key aspect is re-appropriating the ultra-dramatic Michel Legrand music from Joseph Losey’s forbidden romance drama THE GO-BETWEEN (1971) as a satirical leitmotif that hilariously intervenes, Michel Legrand - Theme From The Go-Between (1971) YouTube (2:32), taking this into exaggerated overdrive in an unorthodox story of moral irresponsibility, doomed love, and a slow, creeping sense of inescapable fate, yet the power of the performances feels impeccable, drawing us into this lurid world of carefully calculated exteriors and dangerously erratic interiors. This film is not for everyone, with creepy undertones of human failings, as Gracie shows a psychopathic tendency, where rape in her mind becomes a Shakespearean romance of star-crossed lovers, veering between a dominating, Lady Macbeth personality and one who cowers in fear, like a scared little girl, where there are chilling interviews of various family members, friends, and others associated with the case offering conflicting opinions, as shockwaves give way to heartbreaking revelations. Elizabeth’s teasing and blindly antagonizing behavior also becomes suspect, feeling closer to her role in Mike Nichols’ CLOSER (2004) than anything else she’s made, intentionally pushing the limits of respectability, like a stalker, until eventually she brazenly crosses that line in the most unsubtle ways. There’s a jagged, jigsaw puzzle narrative that never directly approaches the subject, as much is learned through inferences or tangential characters who offer their views, where there are subtleties that should not be overlooked, but the power of the film is the collective dramatic weight that accrues, with Haynes delving into familiar Douglas Sirk territory, where the repressed emotional contradictions are essential to understanding what’s going on beneath the surface, a gray area that never really comes to light, so deeply submerged, only making brief ascensions for air.
Certainly one unmentioned aspect is how they can afford to live in such an idyllic seaside home and raise a family, as neither parent generates any substantial income, with one a convicted felon, supporting herself by baking pies in the kitchen (an illusion of maternal morality, Mildred Pierce anyone?), but that is an extremely limited money source, while Joe, a former pet store clerk, now works as a radiology technician, so this is an inexplicable aspect of their life that remains a mystery (apparently the house was financed by selling exclusive wedding photos to the highest bidding tabloid). Equally mystifying is how Haynes and cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, a regular collaborator with Kelly Reichardt, actually film this environment, shooting on 35mm, as the sunny skies can be blinding before they typically turn cloudy, adding a darker aspect that envelops this peaceful sanctuary, where what passes for normalcy is a lingering societal contamination that is unusually deceptive. While Elizabeth and Gracie are always cordial, they eye each other with suspicion, like circling feral cats, as both are narcissistic manipulators used to getting their way, yet there’s an ebb and flow to their relationship, frequently framed through mirror reflections, where their crude lack of awareness is nothing less than shocking, with rumblings of discontent coming from the children, who are like a Greek chorus of restless discord, not exactly welcoming Elizabeth with open arms, undercutting the supposed harmony in the family, as it becomes evident how trapped into a corner they all feel, where it’s hard not to anticipate an underlying sense of dread, with both parents consistently putting on airs of a happy home, yet it turns out to be much more suffocating. Haynes makes the decision never to retreat into flashbacks, using photographs or newspaper headlines instead, or snippets from sensationalist made-for TV movies, but the full extent of what actually happened is never seen, only suggested, where at one point Gracie casually mentions, “Insecure people are dangerous.” On a visit to a coffee shop with Gracie’s former husband Tom (D.W. Moffett), he was absolutely shocked by what transpired, thinking he knew his wife, but he asks Elizabeth the question on everyone’s mind, “What would make a 36-year old woman have an affair with a seventh grader?” The dead silence resonating afterwards permeates throughout the entire film, like a puzzling enigma that will always linger just out of reach, inexplicable, incomprehensible, and unmistakingly criminal, yet still part of the human condition. While there are plots and sub-plots to this picture, they are not as crucial as character and atmosphere, becoming a hypnotic film that takes a very nihilistic and sardonic point of view, with suggestions that reality may be a pathological repetition of previous behavior disorders. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the character of Joe, who is deeply sympathetic, polite, and quietly introverted, where he seems to be the real family caretaker, providing the necessary equilibrium to keep them from falling off into the deep end, yet he’s strangely old-fashioned, with no real connections, and is mostly a homebody. One of his passions is raising monarch butterflies, a species driven to the brink of extinction, yet he tenderly cares for them, transferring eggs into containers he maintains every day before releasing them back into the wild. Gracie, on the other hand, has no patience for this practice, calling them “bugs,” asking that they be removed from the living room when guests come over. It’s clear they’re not really on the same wavelength or as happy as they seem, with Gracie falling into tearful fits, growing emotionally hysterical at times, where her neurotic fragility requires the calming influence of Joe to settle her nerves, yet despite being twenty years younger, he may be the more grown-up of the two. His sense of emotional restraint is the real surprise of this film, as he’s never been the focus of the story before, as all eyes were pointed at Gracie, yet late in the film he begins to question what happened to the childhood that was prematurely taken from him.
A film that touches on tabloid stories and crime documentaries, like Ezra Edelman’s fascinating 2016 Top Ten List #4 O.J.: Made in America, or Truman Capote’s mesmerizing journalistic exposé In Cold Blood (1967), yet demystifies the sensationalism found in media, adding an extraordinary amount of personal intimacy that may never get at the truth but helps alter our preconceived notions, continually elevated by the amazing central performances that are simply never what we expect, with Haynes exploring the hidden yet profoundly sad nuances of ordinary life, even in such extraordinary circumstances. The Bergman-like merging of Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman into something resembling Persona (1966), or Robert Altman’s 3 Women (1977), is not an accident, as this may be the driving force behind the film, using method acting as a medium, a means to an end, a place where fiction and reality meet, where Haynes reassembles the jagged pieces of their lives, carefully constructing a new identity in a world too confusing and cruel to call our own, as what we see almost never corresponds to the truth, yet we’re all captive to ideas about truth. We never see the peculiar lengths actors are willing to go in preparations for a role, as we only see the finished product onscreen, but this film gets behind the scenes before shooting begins, taking viewers into strangely uncomfortable territory, as Elizabeth seems more concerned with her career, driven by her own personal ambition, and is clearly having a negative effect on the family, whose lives are already a study of emotional upheaval from all the tabloid headlines portraying them as the personification of evil, yet that doesn’t stop her from pressing ahead, creating even more family tension. In an early scene, a package of “shit” arrives as evidence of the kind of hate mail they still receive after all these years, something they have to process as a normal part of their lives. It’s an astounding detail that could just as easily translate to what’s currently being transmitted over social media, where the origins might have begun with this kind of public crucifixion. One of the elements of this film that is especially successful is how well Haynes plants the seeds, setting up various incidents involving Elizabeth that will only become relevant later on near the end of the film, like talking to a classroom full of drama students, where her answers to their questions suddenly take on greater meaning. The same could be said for various conversations she has with other characters throughout the film, yet this is how Haynes constructs such an unusual narrative, using the metaphor of caterpillars turning into butterflies, where some transitions in life may seem inexplicable, yet they happen. Joe’s connection, in this regard, is the missing link to both women, as he’s the one most affected by what happened in the past, and while their children will forever be tainted and traumatized by this experience, he’s the one that is living with it from day to day, given a melancholy disposition, seemingly on an island all on his own with no safety net, manipulated as a “boy toy” at such an early age, where he can’t imagine his wife as the villain. This gives him a childlike innocence and naïveté, a complete contrast to the predatory behavior and temperamental mood fluctuations of Gracie, who sees herself as a victim, still living in a self-serving state of denial for what she’s done, a toxic personality bordering on delusional, exhibiting no capacity to empathize. Yet there she is standing before a mirror with Elizabeth, casually talking about her choice of make-up, actually applying it to the face of her counterpart, creating a moment of intimacy where the artifice actually sends chills in the air when we finally realize just how despicable these two women are, like the old school sensibility in Robert Aldrich’s trashy horror thriller WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962). The final sequence is a hair-raising reminder of how theatricality has a way of registering with audiences, demonstrating how performance intersects with real life, where you find yourself in the middle of these moments that simply register with you. Haynes is such a gifted and intelligent director, where there are levels to this, and he continues to probe the void of the unknown, like a venture into outer space, yet he’s able to add such a humane context to the unknowable.
