New York City may be actively flooding this Friday morning, but the 61st New York Film Festival is still officially opening.
Friday morning kicked off with a screening of May December, the new Todd Haynes-helmed film starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore. Moore plays Gracie, a Mary Kay Letourneau-esque character, now some 20 years removed from the scandal that made her a 90s tabloid figure; Portman leads as Elizabeth, an actress visiting Gracie’s family in Savannah, Georgia to portray her in an upcoming film.
By turns hilarious and deeply sad, May December feels like classic Haynes. In a conversation after the screening, the director shared that the film was shot in just 23 days in Savannah, without any rehearsal time. Responding to a question about Gracie’s lisp, Hanyes praised Moore’s skill at finding out what really makes Gracie tick, almost on her own (which, it’s worth mentioning, is exactly what Portman’s character is attempting to do in the film).
“The burden on Julianne Moore to completely come up with the specificity of Gracie was enormous,” Haynes reflected while acknowledging he wished the actors could join them on stage. “Down to the cadence and her manner of speech—Julianne and I talked about it and there were things in a loose upper palate that we found in Mary Kay Letourneau’s speech that was a kickoff for her.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Haynes spoke about some of the film’s influences, both obvious and obscure. Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film Persona, which follows a nurse caring for an actress on a remote island as their personalities begin to blend into one another, was an obvious source of inspiration. But it was also Bergman’s Winter Of Light that inspired a specific monologue Portman’s Elizabeth gives in May December’s third act.
Haynes’ film also borrows heavily from the score of the 1971 film The Go-Between, which Haynes said had gone out of circulation but he managed to catch on Turner Classic Movies last year. Michel Legrand’s score “slaps you in the face from the very first opening moments of the movie,” Haynes said, and when you see May December, the parallel will be obvious. Mark this down as another reason to save Turner Classic Movies.