This twisted movie with Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman is based on real events

In Todd Haynes' latest film,  Natalie Portman plays Elizabeth, a television actress who has been hired to portray Gracie (Julianne Moore), a woman who served prison time for raping Joe, a 12-year-old boy, when she was 36.

More than two decades later, Gracie and Joe (Charles Melton) are still together, and they agree to let Elizabeth spend some time with them to prepare her character. They do this hoping that by witnessing how much they love each other, she can tell "the truth" in her movie, thereby changing the public's perception that was scandalized by "their forbidden love story."

That's the premise of May December, the movie that has arrived this weekend on Prime Video Spain after its run in theaters, and after the magnificent performances of its three lead actors were overlooked by the Oscars, where it received only one nomination for best screenplay.

Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore in 'Secrets of a Scandal'. Netflix

One of the Best Movies of the Year

In this complex, provocative, and twisted version of Persona, Portman plays an actress portraying a character who in turn is an actress preparing to bring to life a character based on a real person in fiction.

This person is portrayed by Moore, an actress playing a character inspired by a real person: Mary Kay Letourneau, a 34-year-old American teacher who was convicted of raping Vili Fualaau, her 12-year-old student, with whom she had two daughters while serving her sentence in prison.

Knowing that the movie is inspired by a real story adds an extra layer of discomfort to this metatextual game because some creative choices and the tone with which Haynes directs his actresses are intentionally melodramatic, and the result is disturbingly entertaining.

The script of the movie is by Samy Burch, who stated that his intention was not to make a biopic but to criticize the viewer's obsession with recreating real crimes. 

"I really wanted to write a fictional story about the tabloid culture of the 90s, which seems to have led to the world of true crime biopics that we are in now," the screenwriter said at the press conference at the Cannes Festival. "I wanted to question that transition and why we want to keep recreating these stories."

The Real Case

The movie is inspired by a disturbing real case that occurred in the 90s in the United States, and the scandal mentioned in the title and synopsis refers to Mary Kay Letourneau, a 34-year-old American teacher who was convicted of raping her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau. 

Mary Kay Letourneau listening to her sentence in 1997

Letourneau was arrested on March 4, 1997, and at that time, it was confirmed that she was pregnant by Fualaau. On May 29 of that year, she gave birth to their first daughter, Audrey. Fualaau was 13 years old at that time. 

After being released in January 1998, she was arrested again a month later when she was found having sexual relations with Fualaau in a car. This time she was sentenced to seven and a half years in jail. While serving the first year of her sentence, their second daughter was born. Letourneau was released in 2004. A year later, she married Fualaau, who was then 21. She was 43.

*This article has been automatically translated using artificial intelligence*