“May December” hosts a fascinating duel between Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore – rts.ch

“The past is a foreign country. We do things differently there.” The opening sentence of Joseph Losey’s “The Messenger” (1971), whose “May December” is set to Michel Legrand’s haunting music, could just as easily apply to Todd Haynes’ film. This past, buried like a palimpsest, literally permeates every image of this story set in the timeless and otherworldly setting of the Savannah.

It is here that Hollywood star Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) meets the woman she wants to play in an independent production. His model, Gracie Atherton (Julianne Moore), lives a quiet life with her husband, Joe Yu (Charles Melton), twenty-three years her junior, and their three children.

The atmosphere of this happy family is disturbed when the actress questions the couple about their past. It should be said that about twenty years ago, Gracie served a prison sentence after being caught having an affair with her future husband, who was thirteen years old at the time.

a poisonous force

Inspired by the scandal caused by a thirty-year-old teacher abusing his twelve-year-old student before marrying her, “May December” is based on two simultaneous scenes that pack the result with all its toxic power: one On the one hand, a pedophile morality issue; On the other hand, the portrait of an actress in search of truth. At the heart of this story, which swings between satirical satire, family melodrama and sharp comedy, is the idea of ​​a reality that is constantly slipping away, being crushed under the weight of multiple projections.

Several scenes where Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore find themselves together, the first copying the attitudes and phrases of the other, give rise to dizzying moments of cinema. However, the tragic duel between the two actresses, which might bring to mind a sitcom version of Bergman’s “Persona,” plays less the expected card of the actress turning her model into a vampire than a bizarre transference of her superficial take on Elizabeth Gracie. Desires report for crime.

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allegory of chrysalis

From Gracie, unaware of the impact of her past actions, to Joe, whose life is reduced to a story over which he has no control, through to Elizabeth, who claims she wants to access an imaginary hidden truth While it won’t just do justice and copy its models, “May December” points to beings who are irreversibly locked in their own sealed bubbles.

Digging, with funky humor, into the abyss that separates fantasy from reality, the actress from the woman, the character from the person, the film presented at the last Cannes Film Festival reveals a world where imaginary projections more or less surface reality. collide against whose true depth no one can understand.

There are as many differences between Gracie’s story and what happens in the film based on her life as there are between a caterpillar and a butterfly. We are also entitled to see in the recurring image of a chrysalis, which Todd Haynes sows throughout his film, a metaphor for Joe’s character, an ignorant victim who is always caught between childhood and adulthood, as well as reality. is also a metaphor for the one who separates. From its representation. It remains to be seen who, real or imaginary, is more similar to the caterpillar or the butterfly.

Raphael Wolf/Olhor

“May December” by Todd Haynes with Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton. Will be seen in French-language cinemas from January 24, 2024.