MAY DECEMBER
15 On Now and Sky Cinema now
Cert ★★★★
Director Todd Haynes reunites with Julianne Moore for their third melodrama about a beleaguered housewife.
In 1995’s Safe, Moore was allergic to modern life; in 2002’s Far From Heaven, she was a victim of prejudice. Here, Moore is trapped in a prison of her own making.
Loosely based on a true story, Moore plays Gracie Atherton-yoo, a suburban housewife whom we meet at a barbecue at her house in Savannah, Georgia.
Gracie seems to live a perfectly normal life until she’s handed a disgusting item of hate mail by the mailman.
It turns out Gracie is living in the shadow of a tabloid scandal and there’s a reason why her burger-flipping husband looks so well preserved.
Her relationship with Joe (Charles Melton) began in a pet shop stock room when he was 13 and she was 36. They married after she served her prison sentence.
Yet Gracie is convinced she did nothing wrong. She loves her husband and he loves her. They have three happy children.
Natalie Portman’s Elizabeth Berry is shocked by how easily Gracie brushes off that hate mail.
She will play Gracie in a TV movie so she’s staying with the family to get to know them and to hear their side of the story.
Weirdly, Haynes isn’t that interested in Gracie’s point of view. He just wants us to watch these two women circle around each other, and to feel either appalled or darkly amused.
After a while, we’re not sure who is more abhorrent, the unrepentant Gracie or the manipulative Elizabeth.
Two equally brilliant performances make this uncomfortably compelling viewing.