On January 23, 2024, May December was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar.
Can a movie be camp and melodrama? Can a streaming service objectify a fictional person? What kind of jokes can you make on Letterboxd about grooming — if any? And what does Aaron Taylor-Johnson have to do with this? If these questions mean something to you, then you’ve been online after the Netflix release of May December.
Todd Haynes’s latest feature premiered at Cannes earlier this year, where a number of critics deemed it “sly,” “wildly enjoyable,” and the “most fun film” of the festival (say what you want about the movie, but it probably is more fun than, say, Killers of the Flower Moon). Though the movie had a limited theatrical release a few weeks ago, its “wide” release onto Netflix on December 1 prompted a flurry of online reactions this past weekend, a number of which expressed dismay at what was perceived to be mismarketing of the film’s actual fun level. This might be, in part, because of a wider understanding of the film’s source material; the affair at the center of the work is based on the story of Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, whose illegal relationship and subsequent marriage made for vicious ’90s tabloid fodder.
Some 72-hours and a handful of Susan Sontag name-drops later, the May December strain of poster’s disease does not seem to be letting up, instead escalating into heated back and forths about whether a director can make a camp movie even if they don’t see it as camp themselves and whether Rachel Sennott should or shouldn’t have posted what she did on Letterboxd.
Twitter users — some Film Twitter, some less so — have taken issue with the Letterboxd-fication, so to speak, of May December, arguing that the app has encouraged a less serious and more blithe attitude around the film despite its subject matter. Regardless of the fact that there are equal numbers of pithy jokes and serious reviews across both sites, the continued flattening of critical reception working in tandem with a Need for Favs and Hearts neither uplifts interesting films nor sinks bad ones. Like most postings, it’s just fluff.
It’s easy to see the conflict as a war between millennials and Gen Z, or between Film Twitter and Letterboxd Twitter (is there such thing as a social media subfaction of a different social media site), and it’s obviously not helping that the Lowercase Voice of Netflix is chiming in with what either is or isn’t the sexualization of a fictional character who has been groomed. None of this is that serious, unless, of course, it’s the most serious thing in the world. These questions and the disagreements they have provoked lack easy answers — except maybe that the Netflix social-media voice needs to chill.
Part of what feels so refreshing — and, yes, funny! — about Haynes’s film is the way in which it defies a singular lens, pushing you into discomfort, laughter, and sadness. In fact, that’s part of what the film is literally about: the leveling of Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe’s (Charles Melton) story in the hands of Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) and the filmmakers within the film. In an attempt to move toward a “true” story of what happened between Gracie and Joe all those years ago, Elizabeth only pushes further and further away from it. Proximity to them does not bring clarity.
Haynes’s last two films — his Velvet Underground documentary and Dark Waters — might have been more straightforward, but one of the hallmarks of his long career has been the elusive nature of his filmmaking. You’re unlikely to find two people, let alone a whole Letterboxd community, who can agree on Carol, or Velvet Goldmine, or I’m Not There. Why would May December be any different? What film — television, radio (see, once again, Killers of the Flower Moon), Twitter, Letterboxd — does to stories, true or not, is compress and distort. That Haynes is able to wring something both funny and sad, moving and disturbing out of what could otherwise be tabloid pulp is what sets him apart.