Breaking Baz At London Film Festival: Todd Haynes Trumps Tabloid Tale With Gripping Melodrama ‘May December’ Starring Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore & Hot New Star Charles Melton
deadline.comTodd Haynes tells me that May December, his gripping melodrama starring Oscar winners Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, “aggressively disturbs our moral moorings.” It’s true, and as I watched the movie — about a TV star (Portman) who arrives in Savannah, Georgia, to shadow the woman (Moore) at the center of a 20-year-old scandal — for a second time recently in Los Angeles, an image of Donald Trump popped uncomfortably into my head.
Moore plays Gracie, who had an intimate affair with a 13-year-old schoolboy two decades previously, when she was married with a family.
The added detail that they canoodled in a pet store made it perfect fodder to splash on tabloid front pages. That Gracie went to jail and had the boy-teen’s child while incarcerated ensured coverage continued for weeks.
Two decades later, Gracie and Joe, the kid, now in his 30s, are married with three kids of their own, and there’s a facade of calm in their relationship — until Portman’s Elizabeth pays the couple a visit to prepare for a drama based on Grace and Joe’s biology lessons in the pet store.
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