‘May December’ follows an actress (Natalie Portman) who travels to meet and study the life of the woman (Julianne Moore) she is set to play in a film
May December is an upcoming film about a couple struggling under the weight of their age gap, which takes inspiration from the story of Mary Kay Letourneau‘s infamous affair with her student Vili Fualaau, who was 22 years her junior.
According to the synopsis, the film picks up years after a notorious romance between Gracie (Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton) gripped the nation. The couple, who have a 23-year age gap, are getting ready to send their kids off to college when Elizabeth (Portman) comes to town in preparation for a new film based on the couple. The actress starts to do research on Gracie and Joe, which causes their dynamic to unravel as Joe comes to terms with what happened in his youth.
May December initially found success at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023 with a six-minute standing ovation. Netflix bought the film and it is set to have a wider release in theaters and streaming.
Before the film became available to a larger audience, director Todd Haynes discussed bringing the project to life in less than a month.
“It was very important for Natalie and Julie to spend time together because Julie’s character had to establish a sort of physical type that Natalie’s character has to start to imitate throughout the course of the film. That put a tremendous extra burden on Julianne to come up with who Gracie was very quickly,” he told The Hollywood Reporter that same month. “We really did do our very best to [have] just time spent socially with Julianne and Charles and the two main kids who were in the film.
