Acclaimed director Todd Haynes' new Netflix film May December is a psychological drama with a premise taken from the headlines. Written by first-time screenwriter Samy Burch, the film follows a television actress named Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), who flies to Savannah, Georgia, to shadow local couple Gracie and Joe (Julianne Moore and Charles Melton) for an upcoming movie based on their tabloid-fodder past. The pair got together when Gracie, a then-36-year-old married housewife, had an affair with Joe when he was just a seventh grader. Twenty years later, Elizabeth's visit forces the pair to reckon with their past, all during their kids' high school graduation.
If the above premise rings a slight bell, you might remember the real-life story of Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau. In 1997, the nation was shocked when it was revealed that Letourneau, a beloved 35-year-old Seattle-area schoolteacher, had become pregnant by Fualaau, her then-13-year-old student with whom she’d been having sex for nearly a year. The story was the prime focus of tabloid media for months, enshrining the scandal in cultural memory.
