At Todd Haynes, women didn't wait for MeToo to challenge norms and take the wrong paths.
After lesbian love in fifties America with
Carol
or interracial romance with
Far from Paradise
also anchored in the 1950s, the American director tells the story of two elusive women with “slippery” morals in
May December.
The first, an actress looking for a challenge (Natalie Portman), goes to the second who she is preparing to play.
Twenty years earlier, this woman (Julianne Moore) was condemned by the courts and society for her forbidden love with a teenager, who has since become her husband and the father of her children.
Loosely inspired by the Mary Kay Letourneau affair, this story had everything to please Todd Haynes: a transgressive premise, two heroines impossible to categorize and a subtext on cinema, a mirror of our society.
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Madame Figaro.
– This project was brought to you by Natalie Portman, who is producing it.
How did you make it personal?
Todd Haynes.
– The connection was made immediately.
As I read the script, I realized how much the relationships between these characters probed my own morals.
As the story progressed, the ground slipped beneath my feet: my gaze was constantly challenged by the mirrored relationship between these women, the wife's denial of the illegality of her act, the boy's emancipation. who begins to question his consent... From then on, I wanted to take control of the film, to propose a staging which allows the spectator to feel this disturbance.
In an era that no longer knows nuance, was it important to put it back at the center?
The times require that we name and freeze everyone's identity, but this story calls into question this natural tendency.
It's the gray area that I liked, that Natalie liked, and that convinced me to propose the project to Julianne Moore, who has always avoided monolithic, overly readable characters.
Natalie Portman plays Elizabeth, a borderline actress. Does she reflect what you think of actresses?
Not at all, even if it is true that this job puts a strain on the ego and can weaken one.
What I find consistent with reality is the frustration of not being able to escape from a straitjacket.
Getting rid of her image can be complicated: in this case, Elizabeth was made famous by a very popular series, and aspires to other artistic lands.
This is something quite common for artists, but, in real life, I don't know any who, like Elizabeth, don't care about damaging others to achieve their ends.
There is a mirror effect between your heroines. Was there a resemblance between your actresses?
Natalie and Julianne are actually quite different, but their performances convince us otherwise.
The more the film progresses, the more Natalie blends into her character and gets closer to Julianne.
At the start of filming, Julianne and I worked to characterize her character, her way of speaking, of moving... Strong markers that Natalie needed to adopt in turn.
From there, I made the mirror effect the visual manifesto of the film.
My characters constantly look at themselves and observe others.
I played with this idea in directing and directing actors.
Natalie and Julianne are actually quite different but their performances convince us otherwise
Todd Haynes
Are your films mirrors of your soul?
They are the mirror of a social language.
I hope that they reflect the world in which we live, with its codes, its prohibitions, its morals... I try to scratch to go beyond what we see on the surface, to get away from archetypes, sometimes even if it means creating the discomfort.
I want to account for multiple realities, propose other possibilities, question what has been acquired.
I have always tried to represent women in all their complexity.
And I challenge myself with this film.
Until now, my heroines have been more submissive and passive, struggling with their desire and finding themselves confronted with the difficulty of being true to their innermost selves.
In this film, it's very different: their desire is the driving force and the men give in to their will.
What words would you put on the relationship between the character of Julianne Moore and her husband, condemned by justice and morality?
None, because that is precisely what the film refuses to do, and what, I hope, makes it interesting.
I can talk to you about the complexity of their bond, their happiness which is perhaps only illusory, the discomfort that this story causes, but I want to avoid any moral judgment.
Rather, the film tends to raise questions that we often refuse to ask ourselves about the choices we have made in life: are they the right ones?
Was I really in control of my decisions?
Is my happiness artificial?
…
Where does this desire to tell stories about women come from, film after film?
The place of women in society is an eminently political subject that fascinates me.
My generation saw the emergence of feminist theories, which I studied at university, which permeated the world of the arts, preceded and influenced the queer theories which I studied later in my life.
The way in which women are alternately perceived as object and subject has always interested me: men arrogate to themselves the right to make them their object of desire and submission, and, paradoxically, place the burden on their shoulders alone. immense responsibility to keep the family and the couple afloat, to raise the children... But imagining them active and powerful outside of this domestic field is still difficult in society and by extension in fiction.
Conversely, the stories told by men often deal with escape – physical or psychological –, underground worlds, crime, in other words freedom and transgression.
Women must also be able to claim it in life as well as on screen.
May December
, by Todd Haynes, with Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Charles Melton… In theaters January 24.