Director Todd Haynes delivers a delicious piece of classic melodrama as Natalie Portman (also a producer of the film) stars a television actress Elizabeth Berry who heads to Savannah, Georgia, to do some on-the-ground research for her new role as Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), a woman whose May to December romance with a man 23 years her younger named Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), saw her scandalised the world, and featured on numerous tabloid covers. She went to jail, gave birth to twins and later got married to Joe and the couple have since lived happily with the twins Mary (Elizabeth Yu) and Charlie (Gabriel Chong) set to graduate from high school. The film follows Berry as she sets about integrating herself into the local community and aiming to learn everything she can from and about Gracie. She meets and talks with locals and family who knew Gracie when the relationship first began as she tries to get a picture of the woman and why it all happened. Peter Debruge wrote in Variety: May December operates on many levels at once, allowing audiences to speculate as to Gracie’s motivations (the reason we are drawn to movies like the one being made about her) even as we watch Elizabeth ‘become’ her character. At night, she goes back to the local home she’s renting — ‘quaint’ by her description, posh by anyone else’s — and watches video auditions with the underage actors who could be her co-star, remarking that they’re ‘not sexy enough.’ Her interactions with the real-life Joe become increasingly flirtatious, to the point one can’t help but wonder whether Elizabeth feels she needs to seduce him in order to understand Gracie.” Also impressively distinctive is the film’s soundtrack. Todd Haynes became enthralled by the late Michel Legrand’s acclaimed score for the 1971 film The Go Between (starring Julie Christie) and asked his composer Marcelo Zavros to adapt it for May December. Mark Adams