Cannes: Netflix Takes Todd Haynes’ ‘May December,’ Starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore

Netflix has acquired Todd Haynes’ Cannes Film Festival competition entry May Decemberwhich made an impression on the Croisette, earning a six-minute standing ovation during its Saturday evening premiere.

The film stars Natalie Portman as a Hollywood actress who travels to Georgia to research the life of Gracie (Julianne Moore, teaming with Haynes for the fourth time), who became tabloid fodder after she started a May-December relationship with Joe (Charles Melton). , a man 23 years her junior. While preparing for the film about the couple’s past, Elizabeth observes Gracie and Joe’s marriage 20 years after their relationship was national news, a time when they are about to become empty nesters.

The film, which has been sold in the US by CAA Media Finance and UTA Independent Film Group, was written by Samy Burch, with a producing team that includes Killer Films’ Christine Vachon and Will Ferrell.

The News84Media‘s review called May December “A complex drama that’s intrinsically intimate and yet also detached, at times almost clinical.”

Haynes told The News84Media that the screenplay for the movie came to him “from Natalie and her producing team” during the COVID pandemic. “Rarely do you get scripts that feature such compelling female characters at their center,” he said.