CANNES – Perhaps it was the fact we’ve reached the halfway point of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and the media have reached an inevitable breaking point with lack of sleep. Or maybe it was the often (but not talways) demure personalities of “May December’s” Oscar-winning stars, Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. But the press conference for Todd Haynes‘ latest drama didn’t really come alive until the end of the proceedings when the acclaimed filmmaker was asked by an international journalist to clarify what the film’s title actually meant.
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“The title is a term in English, May December. It doesn’t translate into other languages,” he explained. “It just refers to an older/younger relationship, May and December.”
Haynes then, with the kicker, “And some people in France call it Le Macron.”
That elicited a round of gasps and laughs in the conference room. Some levity for a film that peppers humor through a unique narrative of suppressed regret and pain. (Oh, and for those unaware, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, is married to a woman 25 years his senior).
The fifth collaboration between Moore and Haynes, “May December” follows overly eager television actress Elizabeth Berry (Portman) as she visits the subject she’ll be portraying in an upcoming independent film, Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Moore). Atherton-Yoo and her now husband, Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) made global headlines over two decades earlier when their clandestine affair was revealed. Gracie was in her mid-30s while Yoo was only 13 years old at the time. Following Atherton-Yoo’s incarceration, the pair married and now have twins graduating from High School. On the surface, the couple believes they have put the controversy over their relationship behind them, but Berry’s presence rocks their seemingly blissful suburban facade.
Shot on location in Savannah, Georgia, the production was filmed over just 23 days. That’s par for the course for an indie film, but with almost no rehearsal time, it was an adjustment for both Moore and Portman who rarely take on such projects at this point in their careers. Moore recalls on one particular day she completely forgot she had six pages of dialogue for a scene after an equally intense scene the same morning.
“I was terrified. ‘Omg, omg, I can’t do this. I can’t do this,’” Moore recalls. “And Nat said, ‘You got this.” And I was so grateful. I was so grateful. And I still say it to myself. I do, I’m like, ‘You got this.’ (Laughs.) It was such a wonderful group of people. Everyone was so invested. Everyone was so connected. So supportive of one another and it meant so much to have these partners doing this work. And we didn’t really know each other. We only knew each other from awards shows before we did this. And I was like, ‘I love her. I just love her.’ It gave me the energy to get through that six pages of dialogue and that’s no small thing.”
“The feeling is mutual,” Portman adds. “I think one of the first scenes we did was the dress scene and that was such a monster scene too because it was all depending on where [my character] moved. Like it could affect the shot. It was so magical getting to watch Julianne as part of my character. Because it’s kind of what I wanted to do anyway? I had to keep remaining myself that I was in the scene also. Luckily I could use it as something Elizabeth would do. It was a really fun, meaningful, and fast shoot.”
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