Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore reunite in “May December.”

Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), a popular actress in search of a true identity, intervenes in the life of Gracie (Julianne Moore) to make her fall into her future role. Indeed, a film is in the works around this fifty-year-old man who, nearly twenty years ago, was at the center of an affair that made headlines in the tabloid press (a reference to a news item that actually happened in Seattle in 1997). Charles Melton (former student of the series Riverdale), a 13-year-old teenager at the time of the facts…

Despite media coverage, Gracie marries Joe and now lives with him and their children in a troubled haven of peace and eternal youth, which is called into question by the arrival of Elizabeth, increasingly determined to exorcise Gracie’s past to better prepare her for her future role. done Joe, whose children are about to head off to college, is apparently less like a father and more like a caring older brother, whose body still looks like its chief prisoner as he approaches his forties.

Bring in the accused

The film opens with a bang of the rhythm of the soundtrack the messenger by Joseph Losey (Palme d’Or 1971), composed by Michel Legrand, and rearranged throughout the film by Marcelo Jarvos. Some will believe in episodes Let the accused enter, whose credit takes Legrand’s iconic theme. Will Todd Haynes’ film then dive into the murky waters of news stories?

Fortunately, the director of Carol – who could not doubt the strange resonance it produced among the French people (we hope) – dispels doubts and assures about its ability to “parasitize” a highly codified cinema (melodrama in Carol Or far from heaven, Biopic in i’m not there etc).

is available

Buy at Fnac.com

The credits establish this from the start: Joe films the butterflies he rears as closely as possible throughout the film. May December presents itself as a case study, in any case something like the observation phase of an entomologist’s experiment. Not so surprising from a filmmaker known for portraying female characters (or precisely having fun with the elusiveness of fluid and indeterminate identities, such as Velvet Goldmine And I’m not there) are taken in finite spaces enclosed in the panoply of housewife – Safe, Far from heaven, Carol or short range Mildred Pierce (HBO).

In this small laboratory—we hardly add much, because the photography of Christopher Bluwett (Kelly Richard’s designated cinematographer) establishes a setting that is both saccharine and clinical—Todd Haynes poses as an observer of metamorphosis. As an actress, first, at the same time that he observes, almost behind closed doors, the resistance that Gracie has to him, played by Julianne Moore, brilliant in her ambiguity and precision. Or rather, Haynes records attempts at metamorphosis, sometimes dangerous, even lamentable (Elizabeth will never really succeed in slipping into Gracie’s skin), sometimes thwarted (if himself remains, albeit hopelessly, in a perpetual adolescent cocoon).

Julianne Moore, whose first major role (safe, 1995) in a way, inaugurated the Matrix of Todd Haynes’s cinema, The dual existence of public and private slips once again into the par excellence of the housewife, which contrasts the miracle of intimacy with the display of a public persona.

Director of Dark Waters (2019), which always works on this in-betweenness and its porosity, here the two actresses find themselves standing at a more ironic, yet cynical, distance to watch the game of cat and mouse. Moreover, Gracie’s character is apparently placed on the same level as Elizabeth, an actress in her own right, whose morals the filmmaker calls into question. Ultimately, Gracie could be as easily a victim of its media as its great orchestrator.

Alien Vs. the hunter

Todd Haynes doesn’t hesitate to step up to the plate, shamelessly multiplying shots where the frame transforms into a mirror in front of which the two women observe each other in a mixture of attraction and repulsion. Great scenes from May December Paradoxically, its main obstacle is.

The scenes in which Elizabeth/Portman and Gracie/Moore literally “stare” at each other in the eye of this mirror camera – first in Gracie’s house, then in a clothing store – create the effect of doubling Gracie’s silhouette, which then dominates. scene and surrounds Elizabeth like a predator around its prey.

These tables are, in fact, fully constructed and produce the expected meta discourse. Here are two actresses who manage to look at each other without looking at each other while Haynes’ direction deploys a fairly playful geometry of gaze. Tasty – especially when it involves watching, in the same shot, Natalie Portman reinvent herself and Julianne Moore reinforce her talent – but overall not very subtle.

The entire film thus works to establish a symmetry between the two women, without ever positioning itself in the point of view of one or the other. Haynes maintains a certain distance that somewhat betrays (symbolically, at least) the point of view and American filmmaker’s malicious pleasure in letting these two characters devour each other. These large “mirror” scenes, which, because of their immediate position as focal points, condense the film’s entire program into a few sequential shots, paradoxically undercut the work’s power.

From one toad to another

From this toxic duel, Haynes draws a certain taste for farce hidden under a layer of seriousness that is reminiscent. wire by Todd Field, who initially had fun hiding behind a mask of grotesque realism before spreading confusion in the second movement.

But, unlike Todd Field, who deliberately misused his character as a tyrant played by Cate Blanchett to make general criticisms of dominant moral values ​​(as well as Cancel culture and progressivism rather than the dominance of certain elites acting as heralds of universality and purity of art), Haynes continues an adventure already well advanced in his filmography – this fascination for “the subject and its double», which fortunately takes advantage of anything. Nihilism

Both Portman and Moore excel at holding this thin line between ridiculousness and seriousness, making certain wacky scenes potentially comical, but actually enjoyable.

While Elizabeth, acting method Obliging, Joe and Gracie return to the scene of the adultery by simulating their embrace, where the latter, once his “investigation” is over, finally appears on camera in Gracie’s skin.

Where Julianne Moore affirms, Natalie Portman, for her part, ventures into a register where we wouldn’t expect her to see it and works remarkably hard to play a woman with the full conviction of a great actress (that this is definitely a misdemeanor). does not pass for. a part of Haines, far from it) and which apparently laboriously embodies his model.

Haynes revels in deconstructing Hollywood’s belief in Perfect Avatar, a thinly veiled critique of acting methodA technique inherited from the Actors Studio that has become indispensable to anyone in Hollywood who wants to win an Oscar.

It is precisely by exhibiting Elizabeth’s performance of mishabitation that Haines exposes his cinema and, in doing so, locks his film onto a one-sided interpretation: elusive, elusive, with no identity other than the multiple and the other will always be so. Unreachable, moving. Shakespeare’s Parable of the World as Theater in a Nutshell.

If May December Ultimately resting on this not-so-thick line, the second embryonic film fortunately sees the light of day when the filmmaker deviates from his actresses to focus on Jo’s character.

A few intimate scenes emerge here and there, which seem mostly innocuous – her son offering her his first joint on the roof of their house, for example – and which, while far less visible than the reflective performances of the two lead actresses, Leave a glimpse of what. A feature can become the real dramatic crux of a film.

May DecemberBy Todd Haynes, with Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman and Charles Melton, 1h57, in theaters on January 24, 2024.