Natalie Portman plays an amiable actress looking to play a notorious tabloid sensation, only to, in a monologue in front of a mirror, become a dark monster, in the official trailer for Todd Haynes’ May December, which dropped on Tuesday.
The press notes for the Netflix movie, set to open the New York Film Festival this Friday, don’t mention Mary Kay Letourneau, a true-life schoolteacher who became a registered sex offender and was imprisoned after pleading guilty to the second-degree rape of a 13-year-old boy from her sixth grade class, whom she later married.
But the inspiration is all too clear as Portman plays actress Elizabeth Berry in the May December trailer as she visits Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), a woman who in her mid-30s, who was caught having sex in a pet store stockroom with Joe, her Korean American co-worker, played by Charles Melton, when he was 13 years old.
In the film, which bowed in competition at Cannes, Berry travels to Georgia to research the life of Gracie after she became tabloid fodder over the May-December relationship with a man 23 years her junior. Berry observes Gracie and Joe’s marriage 20 years after their relationship was national news, a time when they buckle under the strain of becoming empty nesters.
But in the trailer, Berry as a seemingly engaging actress asking innocent questions as part of her movie role research does more than shadow Moore’s character. “You’re … Gracie,” a dark and demented Berry tells the audience via a mirror at one point in the May December trailer, which recalls Portman’s ballerina character descent in Black Swan.
Haynes directed May December based on a screenplay by Samy Burch, which in turn is inspired by a story from Burch and Alex Mechanik. The producer credits are shared by Portman, Sophie Mas, Pamela Koffler, Christine Vachon, Grant S. Johnson, Tyler W. Konney, Jessica Elbaum and Will Ferrell.
May December will launch on Netflix on Dec. 1.
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