[Editor’s note: The following articlecontains spoilers for “Notes on a Scandal,” “Last Summer,” and “May December.“]
“May December” has been called a dark comedy and a campy take on “Persona” (though director Todd Haynes disdains the “camp” label). It inspired an unexpected Netflix meme-based social media push capitalizing on the shirtless scenes of supporting star Charles Melton, and now this tale of abuse has been nominated for, of all things, a comedy at this year’s Golden Globes. (Netflix submitted the film as such.)
It seems that “May December” has led to every conversation but what it’s actually about: grooming.
The film tracks the fallout of Gracie, an adult woman (Julianne Moore) who seduced a 12-year-old boy (played as an adult by Charles Melton), had his children, went to jail for her misdeeds, and — eventually — married her victim. Natalie Portman portrays Elizabeth, an actress playing Gracie in a big-screen adaptation of her life.
Written by Samy Burch, “May December” shares many of its story beats with real-life teacher Mary Kay Letourneau, who groomed sixth-grader Vili Fualaau, went to prison in 1997 for second-degree rape, and — eventually — married and had two children with him. Yet the discussions and press interviews around “May December” downplay the sinister connections to the real-life scandal, and position the film as a feminist reaction to cycles of abuse at the hands of men.
During a 92Y panel with co-stars Portman and Melton, Moore said her role speaks to “genderized culture” as a whole. “If someone makes a choice like that, if they feel like they need to be rescued romantically by a 13-year-old because they can’t get out of whatever they’re in, what does that say about the genderized culture?” Moore said. “Not that she’s without responsibility. I’m not saying that. But it’s very complicated.”
The question of “complicated” responsibility skirts the issue at hand: Gracie hired, preyed upon, and seduced an adolescent and later married him. That seems like a black-and-white case of predation, so why is Gracie a complex character in a moral gray zone?
Cinematic portrayals of older women seducing younger men include everything from “The Graduate” to “Summer of ’42.” Upcoming films in this vein include “Wicker,” a seemingly “Pygmalion”-ish romance starring Olivia Colman and Dev Patel, and the A24 erotic thriller “Babygirl,” starring Nicole Kidman as a CEO who begins an illicit affair with her younger intern (Harris Dickinson).
These will add to the half-century-old trend that toes the line between empowering and exploitative, this time utilizing the mystique surrounding older women reclaiming their sexuality. However, what is a “feminist twist” on the age-difference dynamic when predation lies at the core?
The colder woman/younger man dynamic took another dark and morally twisted turn on the 2023 festival circuit with Catherine Breillat’s “Last Summer.” Whereas “May December” follows a decades-long story of grooming, “Last Summer” centers on an attorney who specializes in prosecuting underage abuse cases, and whose rebellious 17-year-old stepson essentially seduces her as a form of retaliation against his father. While 17 is the age of consent in France, the affair tears the family apart. The French film will be released in 2024 by Sideshow and Janus.
While “May December” is a dark comedy, its marketing campaign and press tour ignore the film’s central abuse narrative. It views Moore’s Grace as a victim of society rather than a predator. And it’s true, “May December” is not a film about abuse; it is a movie that features abuse as context.
Portman and Moore’s queer-coded two-hander performances prominently feature in the film’s posters and trailers, much as they were for the central female pair in 2006 drama “Notes on a Scandal.” The women’s relationship is at the core of the film; the predatory romance and abuse is merely background context. Much as in “Notes on a Scandal” and “Last Summer,” the grooming in “May December” is presented as just one of the many layers of Gracie’s character.
Directed by Richard Eyre, “Notes on a Scandal” follows high school teacher Sheba (Cate Blanchett) who has an affair with a 15-year-old student (Andrew Simpson) as a respite from her stressful home life with her husband (Bill Nighy) and children. Her problems don’t end there: Sheba is blackmailed by her frenemy colleague Barbara (Judi Dench), who has a sexual fascination with her.
“It was just fascinating to have a female character playing the predator,” director Eyre told IndieWire during a recent interview, “because it’s sort of commonplace to encounter stories of male characters as predators. It was just such a wonderfully unusual relationship, and this woman who clearly was consumed by loneliness and a lack of passion in her life and, in some way, just devoured by her solitary state.”
Eyre said Dench “surprisingly needed a bit of talking into doing it. But she loved playing a character who was essentially unsympathetic.”
Does that make Blanchett’s Sheba sympathetic in comparison? Sheba is both abuser and victim, thanks to Barbara’s manipulation and stalker-like obsession. As Sheba imparts her gaze upon her student, Barbara obsesses over Sheba. Both characters act on inappropriate impulses as they lust after people decades younger than themselves.
In fact, Eyre said “Notes on a Scandal” is remembered more for the predatory relationship between Sheba and Barbara, not Sheba grooming her student. “There was much more interest in the idea that Judi Dench was playing a gay predator than in Cate Blanchett playing this woman having sex with a boy.”
Eyre added that Blanchett never approached the role as though she were playing the villain. “Cate has a sort of perfect acting instinct, so there was never a question of painting her as the maligned predator.” With Sheba seducing her student, “I wanted their relationship to be plausible. As she says, she didn’t really understand. She just found herself being attracted to this boy.”
Sheba has a significantly older husband and stressful home life, much like the dynamic in “Last Summer.” Is that enough of an excuse to make Sheba’s actions seem sympathetic, or more understandable than if the characters’ genders were reversed?
“I think it weakens it to say, ‘Oh, but, you know, in her upbringing, she had a tough time, she was sort of mentally bruised and it left its mark on her,’” the director said. “I think it’s a much more interesting thing if you think actually she may have had a perfectly conventional upbringing and simply found herself being attracted to this boy.”
For “Notes on a Scandal,” studio 20th Century Fox was steadfast in not showing any nudity from actor Andrew Simpson, who was 16 at the time of production. That’s quite a contrast to a film like 1993’s “Crush,” which featured a 14-year-old Alicia Silverstone and an older man/younger girl core dynamic; studio Warner Bros. actually encouraged more nudity.
“I had very long and very tedious conversations with a Los Angeles lawyer about the sexual act between an older woman and a young man,” Eyre said. “He was saying how many inches of the cleft of the bottom of the young man could be shown onscreen. It was literally because of the actor’s age, because the studio wanted to be sure that there wouldn’t be a prosecution in the U.S. with some states that would say that you’re showing a sex act between a woman in her 30s and an underage boy. This was a first for me.”
Still, Eyre was also determined to cast the role as authentically as possible. “I wanted somebody who seemed genuinely like a 16-year-old… on the cusp between being a child and a young adult.”
“May December” also has a meta storyline about casting underage actors in seductive roles, one of the few times the “film about a film about a scandal” shows its hand as Elizabeth [Portman] participates in casting the younger version of Joe for her movie.
Director Haynes told IndieWire, “While making this movie, we found ourselves in this amusing and uncomfortable place where we’re literally casting all these boys and trying to find where the line is between some of the boys who were meant to be way too young to be the in role of Joe in the movie that Elizabeth is making.”
Rewatching “Notes on a Scandal” in 2020, IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio wrote that what was “missing” from the narrative was the “testimony from the abused boy for a window into his obvious trauma.” That missing link is notably the heart of this year’s “May December,” with star Melton’s performance taking viewers into the depths of living with his abuse. However, that storyline is largely sidelined outside of one tearful scene in which Joe begs Gracie to answer why she preyed upon him. (“You seduced me,” she replies.)
Melton told IndieWire that as a result of his character’s grooming since middle school, he viewed Joe as having a stunted “pureness” and “innocence.” “[There is this] wall breaking down with Joe, of him acknowledging that thing that’s buried so deep down inside of him.”
Haynes said during the film’s NYFF premiere that Moore’s character is “not a pedophile. She doesn’t have a history of going after every teenage boy that walks by.”
So, why Joe? As a 12-year-old, he apparently had an ability to unlock that side of Gracie. Joe’s exceptionality and specialness — terms always associated with grooming — are what Gracie weaponizes under the guise of true love. So why are we not calling her a pedophile?
Moore recently told Variety that Gracie is determined to “send her narrative out into the world” to “justify” her romance with Joe. “For her, it’s a great love story,” Moore said. “Her childlike quality, her hyper-femininity, somebody who feels very genderized, allows herself to be like, ‘I’m the child. I’m the girl. He’s the man.’ Well, there’s a big difference between the story that she’s telling and the reality. […] How do you justify your transgression? She justifies it by saying that they were in love.”
Any #MeToo dynamic for “May December” lies with Gracie being seen as the victim. The revelation that she may have been molested by her older brothers is met with an “aha” moment by Portman’s Elizabeth. (Similarly, “Last Summer” reveals that the lead character’s first sexual encounter was not consensual.) Gracie’s revelation is later presented as a possible fabrication when she denies it, providing more fodder for Elizabeth’s own portrayal.
Earlier in the film, Elizabeth meets Gracie’s ex-husband who has his own take: Tween Joe was merely an outlet for Gracie’s dissatisfaction at being a wife and mother right out of high school.
Either way, Gracie’s actions are viewed through the lens of being “damaged” due to Gracie being culturally groomed as a woman. The discussion of her grooming a young man is taken as a sort of power reclamation or retaliation against the expectations of gender. However, that double standard reinforces the same stereotype that “May December” parodies: Feminized women need to be “saved” or “healed” by men, even if it is just a boy.
“She’s the princess that needs to be rescued from the domestic tower, and he’s the young virile knight,” Haynes said of Gracie and Joe. “[This] helps us understand how this happened or the delusions that helped produce it.”
Eyre said he “would love a ‘Notes on a Scandal’ reunion to show the passage of time” and perhaps showcase a shift in the vilification of the core trauma at play. However, it’s possible our culture isn’t ready to see attractive female characters in “Last Summer” and “May December” as the real villains. Is it because of the beauty of its stars, their feminized (and therefore, non-threatening) predatory tactics, or just that we are still stuck within a male gaze of wanting to be seduced by a woman, regardless of age?
“I remember I had expected a bit of controversy [around “Notes on a Scandal”], but there really wasn’t,” Eyre said. “There’s this mythology about ‘What a lucky boy to have sex at 16 with someone as gorgeous as Cate Blanchett.’”
Perhaps that’s where “May December” is most successful in exploring the cycle of abuse. As Portman whispers to Melton after having sex with him and ripping apart his trauma, that’s “just what adults do.”
