This is a profoundly uncomfortable film.
It’s also an acting tour de force by stars Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman: no surprise, since director Todd Haynes has a long-established talent for eliciting delicately nuanced performances in what are essentially two-character dramas (2015’s Carol and 2002’s Far from Heaven leap to mind).
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| At first blush, Joe (Charles Melton) and Gracie (Julianne Moore) seem a happy couple, mutually devoted to each other. But still — and quite unwholesome — waters run deep... |
(Sadly, the story is inspired by actual 1996 events; look up Mary Kay Letourneau.)
The year is 2015. Celebrated actress Elizabeth Berry (Portman) has traveled to the oak- and Spanish moss-laden neighborhoods of Savannah, Ga., in order to study Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Moore), the woman she’ll play in her next movie.
Gracie’s claim to fame? Back in 1992, at the age of 36 — a wife and mother — she was caught having sex with 13-year-old Joe Yoo, in the storeroom of the pet store where he worked alongside her son Georgie. She was arrested and imprisoned, had a child while behind bars, then divorced her husband and married Joe upon release: all of which fueled long-running, scandalized headlines in mainstream and tabloid publications.
Now, 23 years later, Gracie and Joe (Charles Melton) have three children: college-age Honor (Piper Curda) and twins Mary (Elizabeth Yu) and Charlie (Gabriel Chung), the latter two about to graduate from high school. Elizabeth has been invited, with Gracie’s full support, to “shadow” her and her family for several days.
Gracie also has instructed everybody to cooperate, to every extent possible.
(The casualness of such encouragement is just as unsettling as the situation itself. Which also speaks volumes about Gracie’s character.)
At first blush, Elizabeth finds the environment warm and inviting. Many folks — notably Mary — are dazzled by the mere presence of a celebrity in their midst. Joe is amiable and accommodating: a doting parent and husband.
But cracks surface; what seems warm actually is quietly stifling. Gracie soon reveals her true colors as a control freak (which Moore plays with chilling persuasiveness). When Elizabeth joins Mary and her mother when the girl selects a new dress to wear beneath her graduation gown, what should be a celebratory moment turns wincingly embarrassing, thanks to Gracie’s manipulative, left-handed “compliment.” (Yu’s expression, at this moment, is shattering.)
