“I want to find a character, who is difficult to – on the surface – understand,” Natalie Portman’s character Elizabeth Berry says in the trailer for Todd Haynes’ upcoming drama May December. “Were they born or were they made?”
The highly-anticipated new film tells the story of an actress named Elizabeth Berry (Portman) who is looking for a new role when she is cast as Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), a Georgia woman who became a notorious tabloid figure when she sexually assaulted a 12-year-old boy and started a relationship with him.
Now, it’s over 20 years later, and Gracie and Joe (Charles Melton), the boy in question, are married and have children. When Elizabeth visits Gracie to get a deep-dive into her life nd story so she can play her, their world starts to unravel.
The film is “very loosely” based on the story of teacher Mary Kay Letourneau, who in 1997 pleaded guilty to two counts of felony rape of a child after she had sex with her 12-year-old student Vili Fualaau. After she was released from prison, she and Fualaau were married for 14 years.
The movie is already garnering huge Oscar buzz for both Portman and Moore, as well as a breakout performance from Melton. You can see from the trailer exactly why. Each scene we see in the trailer looks about as heavy as a black hole.
The official logline reads: “twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple (Julianne Moore, Charles Melton) buckles under the pressure when an actress (Natalie Portman) arrives to do research for a film about their past.”
Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Tod Haynes,
May December is in select theaters this November and on Netflix December 1.
