Content warning: rape, sexual assault
In May December, directed by Todd Haynes, an actress named Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) arrives in a small community outside of Savannah, Georgia to follow the woman she is preparing to play in an upcoming biopic. That woman is Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), a woman who was caught raping seventh grader Joe Atherton-Yoo (Charles Melton) when she was 36. Elizabeth prides herself in her meticulous preparation for the role in an indie film and ingratiates herself with the Atherton-Yoo family.
Gracie consents to having Elizabeth follow them, join them for family dinners, and interrogate them about their pasts, hoping that the film will change public opinion of the couple. It’s immediately clear to the audience that Gracie’s trust is misplaced—but not because Elizabeth seems particularly condemning of the relationship between Gracie and Joe. Elizabeth takes the same intrusive and dehumanizing position that the press has taken regarding Joe: she follows him to work; she doesn’t protest when Gracie forces Joe to act as her chauffeur; and, later in the film, has sex with Joe. When Joe experiences discomfort and confusion after he and Elizabeth have sex, Elizabeth dismisses these feelings by saying, “this is what grown-ups do.”
Elizabeth replicates Gracie’s behavior and the behavior of the press, taking advantage of Joe, a child stuck in the body of a man—physically manifested in an incredibly compelling performance by Charles Melton, star of Riverdale and the Ariana Grande music video for “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored.” However, the film has also faced accusations of taking advantage of a real-life case, that of Vili Fualaau, a now-forty year-old man who, at the age of twelve, was raped by his teacher Mary Kay Letourneau (at the time 34). Like Gracie, Letourneau served time in prison, but upon release, married Fualaau. Letourneau leaned into her ignorance and naivety—a word that Gracie self-identifies with in May December. Letourneau claimed she was unaware of consent laws, and in an interview that has resurfaced from later in her life, insisted that Fualaau was “the boss.”
In 2020, Letorneau died at age 58 after legally separating from Fualaau. Her story remains one that attracts a kind of almost voyeuristic attention. Does May December participate in that? Fualaau recently came out and said that he was “offended by the entire project and the lack of respect given to me—who lived through a real story and is still living it … If they had reached out to me, we could have worked together on a masterpiece. Instead, they chose to do a ripoff of my original story.” It’s an incredibly upsetting statement made by a man who has not only been a victim of rape for nearly his whole life, including his entire adult life, but also sexualized and exploited by the press. However, it’s also a statement that in a very meta way contributes to the content of the film—Elizabeth’s dedication to her role leads her to become involved with the family to an obsessive extent. She sees Joe, Gracie’s victim, as merely another prop to propel her performance to success. When she has sex with him, she wants to see herself as Gracie—as his long-time abuser.
The thesis of May December is that actors who involve themselves so heavily in the lives of their subjects are bound to get negatively involved. May December seems to use this thesis, however, as an excuse to not consider Fualaau—who can be argued to be the subject of Melton, who portrays Joe. The film could even be suggesting that had an actor like Melton reached out to and followed Fualaau, an uneven (to say the least) relationship could emerge. Coincidently, Melton and Elizabeth have a lot in common as TV actors trying to make a break in the film world.
Elizabeth’s statement that “this is what grown-ups do” comes after she refers to Joe’s life as a “story.” Joe insists that it isn’t—this is his real life. But while Fualaau’s story differs from Joe’s in some ways, the commonalities make the distinction vague.
It’s a hard line to draw, and one that is made more complicated by the tone of the film. May December was controversially labeled as a comedy by the Golden Globes. While the film’s subject matter is most certainly not funny, Todd Haynes, the modern master of melodrama, leans into this melodramatic tone, simultaneously mocking, commenting on, and riffing off of a soap opera. May December isn’t a horror movie, but something more terrifying, as Joe’s trauma is lost on all characters…and maybe even on the film itself.
May December is incredibly layered, especially when juxtaposing it against Letourneau and Fualaau’s actual lives. Race, for example, plays another role in this adaptation. While Fualaau is of Samoan descent, Joe is half Korean and half white. Fualaau’s ethnicity is important because of the historic sexualization Samoan boys and young men face, an aspect of the story that is lost in May December. Race is also interesting when considering the casting of Joe and Gracie’s children, who are three quarters white and one quarter Korean, but all played by half Korean and half white actors. In reality, they wouldn’t ethnically look so much like him as they do in the film. This casting might be a mistake, or a compromise for better performances, but the effect is that the kids are more connected to Joe. And, in the film and in real life, Gracie and Letourneau weaponize the “innocence” that accompanies their white-womanhood.
At the very least, May December is interesting to watch and more interesting to think about. It’s a shame that so much thought around it is lost because of its release on Netflix—I embarrassingly watched it downloaded on my phone while on an airplane. My recommendation is to watch it on as big of a screen as you can, and to be prepared to think about it for a long time after. It certainly deserves your attention.
