“Insecure people are dangerous,” says Julianne Moore’s character in this movie. She should know. Todd Haynes has come to Cannes with this amusing and elegant drama, Highsmithian in its intimacy and malice; a darker shade of Haynes’s Carol, maybe? It’s an unacknowledged duel between two women, played by Moore and Natalie Portman, who have found a potent frenmity at an important stage in each of their lives. Periodically Haynes will present us their faces side-by-side in closeup as they gaze at themselves and each other in the mirror, Bergman-personae of wary malice.
Moore plays Gracie Atherton-Yoo, a controlling and neurotic woman in the familiar Moore style, who does in fact give us the traditional Moore self-pity crying scene. Gracie has hyphenated her surname with that of her much younger second husband Joe (Charles Melton); she has put her surname first. She lives in some style in the prosperous town of Calabasas, California, but it may be her husband’s income is paying for everything; all Gracie has is a hobbypreneur sideline baking fancy Martha Stewart-style cakes and selling them to the neighbours.
