Todd Haynes’ May December – 2023 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 4
After a quick trip to Paris for a retrospective of his career at the Centre Pompidou, Todd Haynes comes back to Cannes for his sixth trip. Masterwork Safe was in the Directors’ Fortnight back in 1995, and then he received comp invites for Velvet Goldmine (1998), Carol (2015) and Wonderstruck (2017) for competition films. The Velvet Underground was an out-of-competition selection in 2021. May December‘s main trio includes Natalie Portman as Elizabeth Berry, Julianne Moore as Gracie Atherton-Yoo and Charles Melton as Joe Yoo — the man-boy character who is slightly stunted in his emotional maturity.
Written by Samy Burch and based on a story Burch wrote with Alex Mechanik, twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past. The score here is delicious and so are the cast of insecure-minded adults
Current temp: At this point we have fifteen out of the twenty folks on our panel and it cemented a 3.3 average grade which makes this campy delight the third highest graded film in the comp. It could end up prizing.
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