May December: Watch this film with someone you can bounce ideas off afterwards
This psychological drama has been nominated for best original script and draws on a real scandal. There’s so much to unpack. Every scene is there for a reason.
May December (M)
115 minutes
In cinemas
★★★★
For this film fan, the main, and most welcome, message of the 2024 Oscar nominations is that complex, intelligent, thought-provoking filmmakers are back in fashion.
The multiple nominations for Oppenheimer, Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest suggest the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has decided it’s OK to be smart.
The psychological drama May December, directed by Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven from 2002, Carol from 2015) and written by Samy Burch, who has been nominated for best original script, is part of this class of high-achievers.
It’s a movie to watch with someone you can bounce ideas off afterwards. There’s so much to unpack. Every scene is there for a reason.
Burch’s script draws on a real scandal: a 34-year-old American schoolteacher, Mary Kay Letourneau, who seduced one of her students, a 12-year-old boy. The crime of having sex with a minor was only the start of an almost unbelievable story that made headlines.
In this film, the woman, Gracie, is played by Oscar winner Julianne Moore. She is in her late 50s and the boy, Joe (an amazing Charles Melton), is in his mid-30s. They are husband and wife, have three children and live in Savannah, Georgia.
This part of the story – a 23-year age gap, the marriage, the children – is taken from real life. From that starting point, the director explores something that is much harder to put in headlines: the psychological and emotional state of the people involved.
The fictional flourish that sets this up is an actor named Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) travelling to Gracie’s home and spending time with her, her family, friends, lawyer and similar-age first husband, with whom she has a son, in preparation for playing her in a television movie.
So you have an actor playing an actor hanging out with taken-from-real-life people who are all portrayed by actors so she can make a movie about Gracie, who is played by an actor, that is central to this movie.
It’s an intriguing metafictional touch that finds expression in standout scenes such as Gracie showing Elizabeth how to apply make-up and the normally quiet and reserved Joe shouting at Elizabeth, “This is not a story. This is my life.”
Elizabeth is the same age as Joe, who is American-Korean. How far will she go in her research? When she watches audition tapes of 13-year-old actors vying for the role, she tells the director, “The kids are cute but they’re not sexy enough.” He replies, “I think you need to come home.” She does not.
Later, speaking to the drama class at the local high school, she talks about sex scenes in general and the question, in her mind, of whether she’s pretending to enjoy the simulated sex or pretending not to enjoy it.
This is a movie about mirroring and reflection. Mirrors are passive observers in central scenes, such as the make-up one, and another where Gracie’s daughter tries on a graduation dress. Joe’s hobby is raising monarch butterflies, with their symmetrical wing markings. When he releases one into the air, we see it in beautiful, beating colour and him only in the distorted reflection of a glass door.
The title, May December, is a common description of an age-gap love affair. The US setting adds another layer as the last Monday of May is Memorial Day, when the war dead are honoured, and May is graduation month for secondary and tertiary students.
When Elisabeth first meets Gracie, she tells her she wants to make the movie so Gracie is “seen” and “heard”, shown as her real self rather than as the criminal cougar who bedded a boy in the stockroom of the pet shop they worked in.
For Joe, the move from childhood into the adult world was different. He’s a grown man with three children but he is also still a child. A scene where he and his teenage son talk on the roof of the house is telling. The son becomes the father.
As are the scenes that point towards Gracie’s control. She burned all his letters but one, a poem he wrote at age 13. When he has a bad day, she feeds him cake and milk.
“People see me as a victim,’’ Joe tells Elisabeth. “We have been together 24 years. Why would we do that if we weren’t happy?”
Melton, as Joe, becomes the troubled centre of this film. It’s a magnificent performance. Moore and Portman are also outstanding as their characters make us consider moral questions that are greyer than they first appear. No one in this film is comfortable with their past, present or future.
Copycat capers deliver the goods
Argylle (M)
139 minutes
In cinemas
★★★½
The spy spoof Argylle is consistently clever, frequently funny and highly entertaining. It’s directed by English filmmaker Matthew Vaughn and written by American actor and screenwriter Jason Fuchs.
The director had a hit with the 2014 espionage caper Kingsman: The Secret Service and followed it with a sequel in 2017 and a prequel in 2021. This new film, also said to be the start of a trilogy, sticks with the genre but adds webs of mystery, on the screen and off it.
The plot is full of twists and turns and revelations that people may not be who they say they are. There are numerous cats let out the bag, metaphorically and literally.
Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) is a successful American spy novelist. A semi-recluse, she lives alone with her feline companion, Alfie. Her books centre on the exploits of a James Bond-like spy, Agent Argylle.
The movie opens with Argylle (Henry Cavill, perfect as a satirical 007) in a typical Bond encounter (spectacular car chase, lots of shots fired, winks exchanged) with a seductive terrorist (singer songwriter Dua Lipa).
The scene, though, is fictional, or so it seems. It fades out and we see Elly doing a bookstore reading of her new novel. A member of the audience asks her an interesting question: is she, like Bond creator Ian Fleming, a real spy?
Soon two real spies, or so it seems, are on Elly’s trail. One, Ritter (Bryan Cranston), runs an espionage agency that has gone rogue; the other, Aidan (Sam Rockwell, the star of this show), is out to stop the rogues.
They each want a USB stick containing top-secret information and think Elly can lead them to it. Her novels have sailed so close to what has been happening in the spy v spy world that they think just one more chapter will do it.
The moment Aidan and Elly first meet, aboard a train, is a highlight. An extended gunfight unfolds that’s as good as the one in David Leitch’s Bullet Train (2022). Elly sometimes sees Aidan and sometimes sees her handsome fictional hero Argylle. This switching between the real and the imagined is well done.
Cavill is so good in James Bond mode, though he’s more Roger Moore that Daniel Craig. When he’s punched in the face, he pauses to check his nose is still straight. Oscar winner Rockwell is brilliant throughout.
The ensemble cast also includes Catherine O’Hara (Moira Rose in the television series Schitt’s Creek), Samuel L. Jackson, Sofia Butella, John Cena and Richard E. Grant.
This movie is based on the novel of the same name published in January 2024 and purportedly written by Elly Conway. This goes to the off-screen mystery. It’s almost certain Elly Conway does not exist. The author of the book remains unknown but there are lots of theories online for anyone wanting to dig deeper.
There is a rumour that the real author is superstar singer songwriter Taylor Swift. One of the rationales is that the on-screen cat, Alfie, is the same breed, Scottish fold, as her cats and he is carried in the same sort of backpack she uses.
In another art-life moment, Alfie is played by Chip, one of the director’s own cats. The professional feline actor first hired for the role, he noted in one interview, “was useless”.
It’s unlikely that Swift wrote the book, though this is the sort of movie where nothing can be ruled out. As the line on the film poster says, The Greater the Spy, The Bigger the Lie.
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