Todd Haynes is an essential voice in queer cinema. While some of his films, such as Carol, Velvet Goldmine, and Poison, have featured explicitly queer themes, others — including Safe and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story — are more subtextually queer. On the surface, May December does not seem to be overtly queer, nor does it seem to provide allegories to the queer experience. However, for Haynes, queer cinema goes beyond representing queer characters.
‘May December’ review: The Netflix movie that side-eyes Netflix true crime
In an interview with Mashable, Haynes explained that to him “queer form” means “challenging conventions of narrative and storytelling.” He explained, “It simply goes beyond content. You look at the sort of imprint of heteronormativity and patriarchal culture in the forms of storytelling and the ways that stories are told. They don’t just switch out gay guys for a guy and a girl and [suddenly] everything’s different.”
Speaking to May December specifically, “the film destabilizes you,” he said. “It challenges the normative ideas about domestic heterosexual life and family-rearing, and it pushes all these boundaries. What I would like to consider as queer is toppling the comfort of the invisibility of choices being made in mainstream society.”
May December, at first glance, looks at the idyllic life of Gracie Atherton-Yoo’s (Julianne Moore) marriage to Joe Yoo (Charles Melton). But the reality of this onscreen love story is far more complicated: Informed by the Mary Kay Letourneau case, Gracie was convicted of raping Joe when he was just 13, when Gracie was in her thirties. Their seemingly perfect life begins to crack when ambitious actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) intrudes to study Gracie for an upcoming role. Digging into the past causes fresh pain and an enthralling showdown between these two determined women. Elizabeth’s growing obsession with Gracie is reminiscent of the 1950 classic All About Eve, which also centers on two women whose dynamic becomes increasingly toxic.
How does All About Eve compare to May December?
Credit: Moviestore / Shutterstock
Despite the lack of overt queerness, All About Eve is beloved by queer audiences. It garnered a reputation as “the bitchiest film ever made,” as per Sam Stagg’s behind-the-scenes book about the film. Haynes himself said, “I could probably watch it every day of my life and be happy,” when visiting the Criterion closet.
The Best Picture winner follows Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), a young woman obsessed with theatre actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis). She finds her way into Margo and her friend’s lives and manages to charm her way to the top, eventually usurping Margo’s position as the theatre’s brightest star. Notably, both Eve and May December’s Elizabeth are the younger women in these duos, and they share a ruthless ambition as actresses.
Just as Elizabeth carefully studies Gracie, Eve watches Margo with an almost ravenous attention to detail. Though Eve and Elizabeth have different motivations, their obsession manifests similarly. Both characters slowly try and become their subject, and both covet success in their careers more than anything else in the world.
Haynes told Mashable All About Eve was not a conscious reference point for him in making May December: “I wasn’t thinking specifically about All About Eve.” However, he conceded that one scene in his film does mirror the famous conclusion of the classic drama.
It’s all about the final shot in All About Eve.
Credit: Netflix
When Gracie (with Elizabeth in tow) takes her teen daughter shopping for a graduation dress, mirrors surround her, and her reflection multiplies. This echoes the last shot in All About Eve, where once Eve has usurped Margo as a glittery leading lady, a new aspiring actress named Phoebe (Barbara Bates) shows up at Eve’s door. Phoebe tries on Eve’s clothes, then poses with Eve’s award in front of a mirror, creating infinite reflections of herself. The message is clear: What Eve did to Margo has been done many times before, and will continue to happen to countless others in the pursuit of stardom. In May December, the multiples of Gracie have a similar effect. As Elizabeth’s obsession with becoming Gracie grows throughout May December, so too does Gracie’s own delusion increase, effectively multiplying within herself.
Asked about this comparison, Haynes said, “I find that final shot [of All About Eve] to just reverberate out from film history. The whole idea of multiplying the story of Eves everywhere, the kind of construction of fans based on the worship of the idol. That whole culture seems to be in some conspiratorial or coercive role in continuing to replicate these stories, these obsessions, around fame and replication. Merging all these things in that mirroring happens so brilliantly.”
The duplicity of All About Eve is also reflected in Joe’s character.
Credit: Netflix
While the dynamic of Elizabeth and Gracie might reflect that of Eve and Margo, Haynes saw a parallel through a different character.
“The way the script is structured, there are all of these repetitions — it’s more around Joe,” Haynes said. “It’s sort of like an assembly line of Joes that keep marching through the story. And you almost get to understand who Joe was. You understand the cultures around the objectification of young male bodies through sort of surrogates around the actual character of Joe.”
‘May December’ versus ‘All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story’
Haynes laid out the doubles of Joe, saying, “Everything from the images of young Joe himself to his son Charlie, and then the boys being auditioned for the role of Joe [in Elizabeth’s movie]… there’s a sense of repetition and a kind of circularity to the whole process of storytelling and making a movie, and also how stories get passed along as well. I love that about May December, and I think you can make a comparable argument that’s running through this sort of libidinal story in All About Eve.”
Haynes has mixed feelings about the future of queer cinema, but plans to address it in his next film.
Having risen to prominence with his 1991 feature directorial debut Poison, during the AIDs crisis, Haynes has seen firsthand the evolution of queer cinema. But despite a growing number of notable queer movies (All of Us Strangers, Passages, Bottoms), Haynes worries the future is not guaranteed. “You feel like the ways in which we progressed as a culture are never certain — they’re so fragile,” he shared. “That inspired a kind of militancy in the AIDS era, which I came into. That created an urgency and a necessity to respond to what was going on.”
“The assault on queer lives and trans identity has been the new free-for-all from the far right in America,” he continued. “It is so appalling and astonishing, and of course [it] reminds me of the very worst and most horrifying extremes that the Republican Party was capable of going to during the AIDS era.”
“I sort of feel like we’re at a point where we might have gotten comfortable and used to seeing queer representation much more in movies and television,” Haynes continued, “but there’s a new level of threat that we’re confronting.”
Haynes has every intention of continuing to confront those very threats. His next film will see him return to territory he hasn’t explored since 1998’s Velvet Goldmine. “My next film is taking me back into an arena that I haven’t addressed in storytelling in a long time, which is a love story between two men,” he told us. The film, currently untitled, will star Joaquin Phoenix. “It’s something quite different from anything I’ve done before. I’m very excited, and the whole way it came into being with Joaquin Phoenix was very surprising and exciting.”
How to watch: May December is now streaming on Netflix.
