HIFF31 Spotlight: "May December"

Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore) and her husband Joe (twenty-three years her junior) brace themselves for their twins to graduate from high school. When Hollywood actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) comes to spend time with the family to better understand Gracie—whom she will be playing in a film—family dynamics unravel under the pressure of the outside gaze. Joe (Charles Melton), never having processed what happened in his youth, starts to confront the reality of life as an empty-nester at thirty-six. And as Elizabeth and Gracie study each other, the similarities and differences between the two women begin to ebb and flow. Set in picturesque and comfortable Camden, Maine, MAY DECEMBER is an exploration of truth, storytelling, and the difficulties (or impossibility) of fully understanding another person.