Last week’s release of Todd Haynes’ film May December coincides with the publication of a rare magazine interview with Brigitte Macron. The film is based on the true story of a woman who began a relationship with her husband when she was 34 and he 12. Emmanuel Macron was 15 when he was seduced by his drama teacher Brigitte, 40. In both, we are invited to consider one of society’s enduring taboos: a relationship between an older woman and an adolescent boy.
The way in which these transgressive relationships are portrayed in popular culture is neither conclusive nor straightforward. Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal was one of the first examinations of the female teacher/male pupil relationship, after new laws in the UK made such liaisons illegal. The novel and the subsequent film captured the levels of deception and manipulation to which the teacher is prepared to go in order to possess the 15-year-old, with the boy seemingly complicit as their “affair” spirals hedonistically out of control. What the audience is not shown is what happens when the authorities intervene and the relationship falls apart.
