Starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, May December is loosely based on the factual story of an adult woman, Mary Kay Letourneau, infamous for her long-spanning relationship with an underage boy.
Two recent dramas that pivot on the fraught convergence of consent, power, and desire have turned these tropes on their heads by inverting the gender of the potentially abusive adults. Todd Field’s Tár (2022) and Todd Haynes’s May December (2023) both center on complex adult female characters who fall for young paramours. In Tár, Cate Blanchett plays a world-renowned composer-conductor whose affairs with younger female musicians end up undermining her career. In May December, Julianne Moore plays Gracie, an aging belle once sent to prison for having an illicit sexual affair with a Korean American seventh grader, Joe, whom she later married. Made during, and directly responding to the provocations of, the #MeToo era, both films question whether the ethics and politics of intergenerational desire change when the gender, sexuality, and/or race of the players depart from the standard pattern.