Make That March December.  Maybe February.

May December a film by Todd Haynes.  With Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton.  Streaming on various platforms.  **

With all due respect to the various people who have suggested that this movie be nominated for Best Picture (including both reviewers at the New York Times), and fully understanding that Todd Haynes is into weird character studies, I thought this was one of the dumbest movies I’ve ever seen.  It might have vaulted to the top of the dumb list.  That’s exalted company, I know, but what the hell.  It deserves it.

For one thing, let’s consider the subject.  In a season that gave us Oppenheimer (hell, in a season that gave us Barbie), this is a movie about a 35 year old woman who, though she had a husband and teenage children—she actually had children who were older than her inamorata—not only wanted to have sex with a thirteen-year-old boy (an impulse I would have thought she had escaped at age fifteen, tops), but actually fell in love with him.  And when she got out of the slammer for whatever crime she was charged with, she still loved him, and actually married him.  (Some people are still outraged about the romance that Woody Allen portrayed in Manhattan.  But think about it for a moment.  And compare Mariel Hemingway to any thirteen-year-old boy you’ve ever met in your life.)

Talk about awkward social situations.  In the present time of the movie, the two are happily married (though they get regular deliveries of boxes of shit in the mail), and they have children who are the same age as her grandchildren.  All these “kids” (a word which I personally detest) are going to the same high school, and about to celebrate graduation together (the woman’s  two families bump into each other at a restaurant the night before the big day.  I don’t know why the hell they didn’t just sit at one big table).

Another part of the weirdness (based on an actual situation, which I would know more about if I took more notice of the tabloids at the supermarket) is that the events of this story have been moved to Savannah, where this happy family lives in a lavish house, though the father is some kind of medical technician and the mother bakes cakes for a living (at home.  People don’t really want the cakes; her friends buy them to support her).  Where did they get the money for this house?  Little questions like that go unanswered.  I guess the whole thing is supposed to be so weird that we don’t notice.

What the movie focuses on is an actress named Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) who is portraying this woman, named Gracie (Julianne Moore) in an upcoming movie (directed, presumably, by Todd Haynes.  Or possibly John Waters, who would at least have seen the irony in it).  She comes to Savannah to hang out with these folks for a few weeks and gain empathy with her situation, so she can portray her.  When we see her arrival, no one answers the front door, so she just walks around to the back; she seems to be bearing a gift.  Unfortunately, it’s a box of shit that she picked up on the front porch (we were wondering about all those Fed Ex deliveries.  Gotta get that stuff while it’s fresh).  She joins right in with a holiday celebration they’re having.  And things go on from there.

What the movie is really about, I suppose, is the way Elizabeth gets under the skin of the woman she’s about to portray.  She talks to her “kids” (there’s that word again), her husband (the former thirteen-year-old), her ex-husband, who is now a portly grandfather.  He was blindsided by the whole thing, as you might expect.  Who expects to be cuckolded by a thirteen-year-old?

The problem is that Gracie is, almost by definition, a lunatic (I mean come on, a thirteen-year-old?).  I also wonder about the guy who, when all is said and done, would actually marry her, and what his parents thought of the whole situation.  And how he was going to make a life for himself.  What do you say to your son when he’s thirteen and wants to have sex.  Sure, go ahead son.  Look what it did for me.  (Have some shit.)

The guy in question, Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) seems to have taken a permissive attitude toward his children.  When his son is sitting out on the roof, contemplating his graduation, Joe goes out to sit with him.  The young man actually came out to smoke a joint, and Joe joins in with that too, though it’s a totally new experience for him (he wasn’t into drugs and rock & roll.  Just sex).  In fact, he nearly falls off the roof, which would have made this utterly bizarre script even more bizarre.  That’s what happens when you decide to be pals with your “kid.”

I admit that Natalie Portman does a remarkable job of imitating Julianne Moore.  You begin to realize that, in some deep way, Elizabeth is as weird as the woman she’s portraying.  (At one point she goes to the local junior high school as a celebrity, and a student asks if she has ever done a sex scene.  She gives a totally inappropriate response, way beyond what students that age needed to hear.)  And at the end of the movie, when we see some early takes from the movie (they finally found a guy to portray the thirteen-year-old.  He’s probably about nineteen), we see her getting into the character.  She’s really starting to like this putative thirteen-year-old.  At that point, we’ve had enough.

Some of us had a long time before that.