May December (2023)

This is a present day depiction of the Mary Kay Letourneau case, which depicts the Mary Kay character (Julianne Moore) and the twelve-year old boy she raped, and got impregnated by. The names have been changed but the story remains the same. In the movie, twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, Gracie Atherton-Yu and her husband Joe (twenty-three years her junior) are getting ready for their twins to graduate from high school. Hollywood decides to do a movie about them as this vast change is occurring. Actress Elizabeth Berry comes to spend very up close and intimate time with the family to better understand Gracie, who she will be playing in a film, and as a result, the family dynamics unravel under the pressure of the outside gaze. Joe, never having processed what happened in his youth, starts to confront the reality of life as an empty-nester at thirty-six. Elizabeth and Gracie study each other, the similarities and differences between the two women begin to ebb and flow. Gracie is without remorse, and Joe has let her live that way for a very long time, something that may not remain once the kids leave home. Set in picturesque and comfortable Savannah, Georgia, May December is both a fairly cringe worthy and bracing exploration of truth, storytelling, and the difficulties (or impossibility) of fully understanding of what lies below the surface in any situation.