How I felt reading it… was so uncertain, fascinated, troubled,’ admits Todd Haynes, talking about the script for his beguiling new film May December, when Total Film meets him pre-strike at the Cannes Film Festival. The day before, at the press conference, the esteemed American filmmaker behind Carol and Far from Heaven brought the house down when he explained the meaning of the film's title – a relationship, of course, defined by a huge age gap. ‘Some people in France called it “Le Macron”,’ he quipped, alluding to the French President's much older partner, Brigitte, whom he met when he was 15.
Scripted by casting-director-turned-writer Samy Burch, also turns on a coupling between a young man and an older woman. As the film's opening informs, Gracie Atherton was 36 when she met Joe Yoo, a 13-year-old who worked in the same pet store she did. When they were caught having sex, she was
