“Natalie Portman is smart and willing to take risks”: For Todd Haynes, she becomes a vicious beast

It’s a sunny afternoon, October 3, 2023, on my way to talk to Todd Haynes, I think, haha, how stupid would it be if I crashed my bike into the tram right now. Which of course I do at that exact moment. A car brakes, a woman gets out and screams, my knees burn like hell but my pants are still intact, my hands are barely bleeding.

Todd Haynes is important to me. The director of several favorite films – the glam rock ode “Velvet Goldmine”, the melodrama “Far from Heaven” with Julianne Moore, the Highsmith film adaptation “Carol” with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. And then he stands there, as if he has just gotten out of bed, disheveled, rumpled, but in a good mood.

Firstly because the beds at Hotel Baur au Lac are great, which is to be expected with room rates around 1000 francs. Secondly, because he had had an excellent meal the night before. The hottest gastronomic shit in Zurich. At least for him. «In Niederdorf! What’s the name of the restaurant again? Ah, it’s a cheese restaurant!” I ask if he ate fondue. “No, not fondue, I had Äpplermaggonen.” Älplermagronen? «Exactly, it was soooo delicious, you wouldn’t believe it! The best meal ever!” Mediocre.

Now he is a guest at the Zurich Film Festival with his new film “May December”. The title of the film refers to the different ages of a couple in love. Joe (Charles Melton) is young May. His wife Gracie (Julianne Moore) dies in December. They fell in love when Joe was underage. Gracie went to prison where she was pregnant with twins. Then they got married. Gracie’s eldest son from her first marriage is the same age as her second husband, and the twins are graduating high school.

So far, the story is based on a true story: In 1997, Mary Kate LeTourneau, a 35-year-old teacher from Seattle, was sentenced to seven years in prison for having sex with her 12-year-old student. last year. In prison she gave birth to their first child, after her release the two married, divorced in 2019 and LeTourneau died a year later.

Samy Burch, who had previously worked as a casting director (including on all the “Hunger Games” films), turned it into a script, moved it from Arizona to Maine and had Gracie and Joe meet, not at a school, but in a far country. more mystical environment a pet shop. And she created another character, the actress Elizabeth, who would play Gracie in a sensational biopic about the famous true crime case of the time.

In 2020, when Covid shut everything down, “when a lot of scripts were being passed back and forth and projects were being drafted and thrown out,” says Todd Haynes, Natalie Portman sent him the script for “May December.” She would have liked to work with him someday; she had already sent him a script once to no avail. “But it wasn’t until I read May December that I was captivated. We started talking, I’ve never been able to talk to someone like that before. She is such a smart, interesting, intellectual, risk-taking person and wants the same things as much as I do.”

Elizabeth (Portman) is a beast, an efficient but mediocre actress who must learn every detail of Gracie’s life to get a feel for her character; To her, Gracie, Joe and the kids are nothing more than a self-service store. And she loves to shock the family with stories from her daily work. For example, when she happily talks about filming sex scenes. “It was fun for Natalie to imagine that the audience could draw conclusions from Elizabeth about herself. A lot of actresses would say, Oh, I’m really worried about that, isn’t that damaging to their reputation?”

For this she won an Oscar in ‘Black Swan’. But while she had to portray everything like a crazy ballerina, in “May December” she works more delicately and meanly. And finds a unique protagonist in Julianne Moore. Because here too, little is what it seems. Their mission is manipulation.

Todd Haynes is obsessed with movies, especially old ones; he is the walking Hollywood encyclopedia par excellence. “We don’t often see the strength of Julianne and Natalie, the complexity of their roles and the breadth of the two women’s roles today. Hollywood actresses were allowed to do something like that in the 1930s, there was a huge audience that wanted to see female stars, even in morally questionable roles, the best example of which is Bette Davis. Murderers, fraudsters, criminal women of all kinds.”

Animals play the biggest supporting role in ‘May December’. Little birds, translucent fish in the pet shop where Joe and Gracie met and where Elizabeth now lives out erotic fantasies while doing her research. Nice butterflies that Joe breeds. But the butterflies are not so delicate and fragile. “They represent this uncanny urge; they must continually transform, completing one life cycle after another, from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly.”

Haynes pimps the beautiful winged animals with the most special music. It sounds like something out of an old horror film, is brutal and cutting and comes from the 1971 adolescent drama ‘The Go Between’. “I saw the film again last year and I thought: wow, this sound is so out of touch with reality. story, waking up completely blows you up, it sharpens your senses, your curiosity, it’s like a slap in the face. It changes your view of the film. That’s exactly what I wanted.”

Normally Todd Haynes’ films look as if they are bathed in autumn leaves, rich, radiant colors, “May December” is bright, almost faded, white predominant, in the painted wooden facades of the houses, the clothes, the pale skin of Julianne Moore. The color of innocence conceals people’s guilt. “The place wanted this color. The script originally took place in the small town of Camden, Maine.

How appropriate, Maine, home of Stephen King and all his books. At least as scary as the music Haynes chose! “Yes, the horror and gothic connotations of Maine are of course enormous, but Samy Burch chose Camden not because of that, but because it was the secret template for “Peyton Place.” And the film adaptation was shot there.” Cool.

But what does this have to do with the pale colors of “May December”? «Maine’s color palette is as clean as freshly washed laundry, these are completely pure primary colors. Savannah, Georgia, where we shot, is the opposite: humid, hazy, cloudy, milky white, the light seems sickly and pollutes everything, even when we thought we had a clear dark line in the foreground of a photo, there was dissolved by this light. And I said, okay, we have to make the whole movie like this.”

Like in a swamp? “Exactly, like in a swamp where you can’t go any further.” Swamps also preserve corpses. Such as the memories of Gracie and Joe that are brought back to light by Elizabeth. “Right! I love it when people come up with ideas when they talk about my films that I’ve never had before!”

Charles Melton rose to fame with the teen series ‘Riverdale’. How did he and Haynes get together? “Riverdale is not my thing. I watched it briefly before it started, but not long enough to see Charles Melton. My casting manager showed me pictures of eight or ten young actors, I saw a picture of Charles and said, ‘No, he looks too good, like a movie star, that’s not how I imagined my Joe!’

Joe is the tragic core of the film. The boy whose life was destroyed forever. And which is now destroyed again by Elizabeth. Used and reduced to the status of the seduced minor. “And then Charles came to the casting,” Haynes enthuses, “and his interpretation of Joe was so nuanced and subtle, total complexity, the opposite of what you normally expect from a TV actor. Karel is an artist.”

Wikipedia describes ‘May December’ as a ‘romantic drama’. “Oh no!” Haynes protests. And months after our conversation, the Golden Globes will classify it under “Musical or Comedy.” Personally, I saw a clean, compact, compelling psychological thriller. “He’s not really,” Haynes replies. “It really amuses me that people can’t categorize him. Hey, it’s just a movie! Films used to be opportunities for debate, places of uncertainty, places people had never been before.”

Places that could not be located and did not need to be located. Enriching places. Like Todd Haynes’ small town of Savannah, which is actually called Camden, and more specifically Seattle.

Samy Burch has been nominated for an Oscar for her screenplay. “May December” hits theaters on February 22.