MAY DECEMBER: a seat-squirmer of a psychodrama

Photo caption: Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, in MAY DECEMBER. Courtesy of Netflix.

Todd Haynes’ May December is both absorbing and unsettling. The TV actress Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) has been cast in a movie to play a real-life person Gracie (Julianne Moore) who,20 years before, had been embroiled in a tabloid scandal. that made her notorious. To research the role, Elizabeth visits the hometown of Gracie and her husband Joe (Charles Melton) to meet them and other people touched by the scandal. I’m not going to spoil that original scandal because Haynes unspools the story so skillfully; it’s a jaw-dropper.

Right off the bat, we notice two things. First, Elizabeth and Joe are both 36 years old, and Joe’s wife Gracie is much older. Second, although Joe and Gracie’s home and family seem very vanilla, Gracie’s behavior is a little off.

Haynes is known for visually rich, female-centered melodramas like Carol and Far from Heaven. This is far more psychodrama than melodrama.

As we and Elizabeth see Gracie with her children (the youngest are graduating from high school this week), she seems a little more than just a socially awkward bossy mom. She can act like a bossy mom with her husband, too. It’s not long before she veers from oddball quirks into the indisputably inappropriate.

As we consume news, we occasionally ask ourselves, What kind of person would do THAT? Or What kind of person would even THINK of doing that? Some people have a blind spot and feel no shame for something shameful they’ve done, justifying their own behavior and firmly seeing it as misunderstood by others. May December is a movie about such an abnormal personality, and the carnage she has wreaked.

Julianne Moore keeps us squirming in our seats throughout the film. Portman, who initially brought the story to Haynes, is equally superb in a role that grows from reacting to Gracie’s dysfunction into her own issues with boundaries. Both Moore’s and Portman’s performances are awards-worthy. Cory Michael Smith is also outstanding as Gracie’s son from an earlier marriage. It’s a vivid and memorable performance.

Casting director Samy Burch wrote the screenplay, her first feature, from her own story co-written with Alex Mechanix. Burch’s pacing in revealing more and more of the backstory is the key to May December’s effectiveness. When she drops in some exposition, it meshes with the behavior we’ve already seen from Gracie. Burch gives Gracie a couple stunning lines and Elizabeth has a killer line, too. When a characters say, “This is what grown-ups do“, it’s devastating.

Incidentally, for those who find the story farfetched, it is clearly based on an 1996 occurrence in Burien, Washington.

May December is in theaters, just before it streams on Netflix on December 1.

JACKIE: dreary and somnolent

Natalie Portman in JACKIE
Natalie Portman in JACKIE

If you put a Chanel suit and pillbox hat on Natalie Portman and direct her to speak breathily, you’ve got Jackie Kennedy, which is noteworthy, but not enough reason to see the dreary Jackie.  Portman superbly paints the portrait intended by director Pablo Larrain (No), but that vision is unconvincing and not at all compelling.

Larrain’s thesis is that Jackie moved from shocking grief to a fierce determination to enhance her husband’s legacy in the three days after the assassination, intentionally creating the brand of “Camelot”.  He interweaves three stories: the assassination and funeral, Jackie’s later Hyannis Port interview with journalist Theodore H. White and a re-enactment of the First Lady’s televised White House tour.

Despite a remarkable impersonation by Portman, none of this really works.  Jackie ranges from dreary to gloomy, and in case we forget, we’re prodded by an intrusive score of sad, really sad discordant music.   One can imagine several cellists committing suicide after performing this score.

The real Jackie was bred to be a docent, and her confident White House tour was a television triumph.  Yet Jackie’s Jackie acts like she needed one more Xanax to make it through without a breakdown.  I didn’t believe Jackie’s bitter cat-and-mouse with the journalist, either.

Portman is exceptional at playing the on-top-of-the-world celebrity First Lady, the stunned and shattered victim and the laser-focused widow.  John Hurt is excellent as a consoling priest.  Greta Gerwig plays Jackie’s confidante Nancy Tuckerman, and manages  to avoid blame for ruining a movie by herself for the first time.  This is not the actors’ fault – it’s Larrain’s.

I’ll describe a movie with the word “somnolent” for the first time on this blog because I actually did drift off to sleep twice.  It would have been just once, but The Wife prodded me awake both times.

[SPOILER ALERT:  Bad history in historical movies enrages me, and there are two examples that appear in the last ten minutes of Jackie.  First, as Jackie is preparing to move out of the White House, we see Ladybird Johnson actually fingering the fabric for new curtains, which CERTAINLY did not happen for a variety of reasons, chief among them being that Ladybird was too decent.  Second, we see a flashback of JFK spinning Jackie around a White House dance floor like a polka king; of course, JFK’s chronic back condition did not allow him to move like that.]

DVD of the Week: Black Swan

Natalie Portman won the Best Actress Oscar for playing a ballet dancer who competes for the role of a lifetime.  Her obsession with perfection  is at once the key to her potential triumph and her potential ruin.  Barbara Hershey brilliantly plays what we first see as another smothering stage mother, but soon learn to be something even more disturbing.  Vincent Cassell (Mesrine) captures the charisma of the swaggering dance master who pushes the ballerina mercilessly.  Portman’s dancer has the fragility of a porcelain teacup, and, as she slathers herself with more and more stress, we wonder just when, not if, she’ll break.  The tension crescendos, and the climactic performance of Swan Lake is thrilling.

Fresh from The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is another directing triumph.  In fact, parts of Black Swan are as trippy as Aronofsky’s brilliant Requiem for a Dream.

Black Swan is also on my list of Best Movies of 2010.

This Week's Movies to See Right Now

Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhardt in Rabbit Hole

This week’s must see film is Rabbit Hole, an exquisite exploration of the grieving process with great performances by Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhardt, Diane Wiest, Sandra Oh and Miles Tenner.  Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is a rip roaring thriller and a showcase for Natalie Portman and Barbara Hershey. Fair Game, the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson story with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, is also excellent.  For some delectable food porn, see Kings of Pastry.

Morning Glory is a passable comedy, as is Love and Other Drugs.

There are some Must See films still kicking around in theaters this week: Inside Job, The Social Network and Hereafter. All three are already on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far.

The Town is hanging around theaters and, without strongly recommending it, I can say that it is a satisfying Hollywood thriller. If you’ve seen the first two Lisbeth Salander movies from Sweden, then you should complete the trilogy with The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.

I have not yet seen The Fighter, The Tempest or The Company Man, opening this weekend. You can see the trailers at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the Week is Inception, perhaps the year’s best blockbuster. My top two American films of the year are now available on DVD – the indie Winter’s Bone and Pixar’s Toy Story 3. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.

Movies on TV include Stagecoach, A Shot in the Dark and The Searchers on TCM.

Black Swan

Natalie Portman plays a ballet dancer competing for the role of a lifetime.  Her obsession with perfection  is at once the key to her potential triumph and her potential ruin.  Barbara Hershey brilliantly plays what we first see as another smothering stage mother, but soon learn to be something even more disturbing.  Vincent Cassell (Mesrine) captures the charisma of the swaggering dance master who pushes the ballerina mercilessly. Portman’s dancer has the fragility of a porcelain teacup, and, as she slathers herself with more and more stress, we wonder just when, not if, she’ll break.  The tension crescendos, and the climactic performance of Swan Lake is thrilling.

Fresh from The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is another directing triumph.  In fact, parts of Black Swan are as trippy as Aronofsky’s brilliant Requiem for a Dream.  I expect Aronofsky, Portman and Hershey to be nominated for Oscars.

Movies I'm Looking Forward To: Early November Edition

I’ve updated the Movies I’m Looking Forward To page to add trailers and descriptions of some key November releases.

November 5 brings us Fair Game and Welcome to the Rileys. Ripped from the headlines, Fair Game is the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson story with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. Welcome to the Rileys was a hit at Sundance hit featuring James Gandolfini as a Midwestern plumbing contractor who visits New Orleans for a conference, meets teen runaway Kristin Stewart, and decides to stay.

On November 26, we’ll see some major Oscar bait with Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter in The King’s Speech.

I’ve also listed the big December movies, including The Black Swan with Natalie Portman, The Fighter with Mark Wahlberg, Julie Taymor’s The Tempest, the Coen Brothers’ True Grit and Mike Leigh’s Another Year.

Here’s the trailer for The King’s Speech.