This is What Grown-Ups Do — What’s Consent?
There’s much to be said about a movie that thoroughly manages to unsettle its audience, and indeed, much is being said about Todd Haynes’ (potentially Oscar-worthy) May December.
Loosely based on the tabloid scandal of Mary Kay Letourneau, a 90s school teacher sentenced to jail for having sex with a 13-year-old boy, Vili Fualaau, May December stirs a slew of uncomfortable questions, chiefly,
Should one’s desire and pleasure equate consent?
It’s an uncomfortable thing to talk about, particularly when faced with such a troubling age gap, yet much of May December centres on the boy’s point of view. Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) is now 36 and utterly lost. He’s spent the past 24 years with Gracie (Julianne Moore), a woman 23 years his senior who seduced him after-hours as a 13-year-old store aid. They’ve raised three kids together, and until now, he’s always insisted that the relationship was his choice.
Only at 36, and with the arrival of an actress doing a film about them, does Joe begin to wonder… is 13 too young for consent?
To some viewers, the very premise seems mad. Any grown-up watching the film is, no doubt, disgusted by Gracie’s behaviour, but despite closing in on 40, Joe has remained a perpetual, stunted, badly mistreated child. Despite being a father himself, he remains convinced that at 13, he was able to consent (much like the real-life Vili Fualaau seemed to condone Letourneau’s twisted theory that he was the seducer, before they finally separated in 2019).
Haynes’s May December (an old moniker for age gap liaisons) does a stunning job of exploring childhood trauma, and the immensely loyal bond between victim and abuser, without using those words. Many modern films plaster the words “trauma” and “abuse” left, right, and centre, in the interest of publicity, but May December slips in quietly. Unassuming. Then, proceeds to showcase one of the most horrifying aspects of a traumatic bond.
While the rape of a 13-year-old child by a 36-year-old adult is nothing short of horrifying, it’s not what the director throws in their faces. Yes, the act itself is awful, but Haynes goes to painstaking detail to replicate the fierce devotion that can arise from deep-rooted trauma. In Joe’s twisted Neverland, a 13-year-old is capable of consent, because Joe has never left the age of 13. More than two decades later, Joe is still a teenage boy, yet one who’s been dragged into the life of a man closing in on 40, with a job, and kids, and responsibilities (not to mention a moody, sultry never-content wife).
There’s an interesting dissociation going on in Joe’s mind between 13-year-old him who had sex with a woman old enough to be his mother, and 36-year-old Joe, who’s a caring, attentive father. The father seemingly fails to notice the wrongness of Gracie’s seduction because the father (who’s really still a boy) has never been allowed to consider victimhood.
There’s a chilling dialogue towards the end of the film, where Joe finally confronts Gracie about the abuse, taken almost verbatim from a 2018 interview with Letourneau and Fualaau. When the interviewer tells Letourneau that she was the responsible adult, Letourneau replies:
Letourneau: “You can say that.”
Interviewer: “I am saying that.”
Letourneau: “I was by age.”
Interviewer: “And maturity.”
Letourneau: “Uh, yeah, maybe. But you don’t know him.”
Interviewer: “I don’t need to know him in this discussion. He’s the child. I’m talking about you.”
Letourneau: “Who was the boss?”
Fualaau: “There was me pursuing you, but — ”
Letourneau: “Who was the boss back then?”
Fualaau: “This is ridiculous.”
Letourneau: “But who was the boss? Who?”
Fualaau: “This is getting weird…Well, I was the pursuer.”
Letourneau: “Yes!”
Interviewer: “Mary … come on, he was 13.”
Letourneau: “It doesn’t matter.”
Interviewer: “It absolutely does matter.”
Letourneau: “Oh, well, flaw me.”
In truth, the answer’s simple — the “boss” is whoever controls the narrative.
In real life, as in the film, the abuser seems obsessed about the 13-year-old’s alleged enjoyment. And fair enough, it’s not unheard of for a teenage boy to have a crush on a much older woman. Like all good abusers, Gracie uses Joe’s enjoyment of their rendez-vous as a clear sign of consent.
And down the years, that shapes this immature, volatile boy’s reality. Joe’s not just confused about consenting to that initial sexual encounter. If the “relationship” is his fault, then naturally, he’s saddled with the guilt of Gracie’s subsequent imprisonment, her trauma of having to give birth to their children in prison, and all the shame and hate the world has directed at them for nearly a quarter of a century. A mighty burden, indeed, for a 13-year-old to carry, and buried under all that, it’s no wonder Joe no longer manages to dig himself out.
Driven by increasingly conflicting emotions, Joe ends up in bed with the actress playing Gracie in the upcoming movie, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman). After a rushed sexual encounter, he deflates and accuses Elizabeth of not really caring for his feeling. At which point, the woman stares at him point-blank, and informs him,
This is what grown-ups do.
The line creates a fascinating parallel between the two women. Because true enough, in the adult world, consent and sexual enjoyment are where the story begins and ends, for many people. While often unhealthy or hurtful, a rush-of-the-moment quickie is not uncommon among consenting adults and, as Gracie’s lawyer jokingly points out, is nothing to go to jail over.
In that hotel scene, Elizabeth appears terribly calloused and unfeeling, as the audience obviously feels for poor Joe. And yet, it’s her using him, her callousness that allows him to (hopefully) break free of his abuser’s gaslighting. Realizing that Elizabeth used him and (perhaps) tricked him into bed, using the “grown-up logic” that consent is easy, Joe finally understands Gracie’s long-ago inappropriate behaviour.
Because although he’s spent 24 years trapped in a man-child existence, Joe’s mirror has finally cracked. The 13-year-old boy of yore no longer looks upon the world of grown-ups with desire and fake confidence, he sees it for what it is — cheap, lonely, and often ugly.
The grown-up he’s been pretending to be all this while lives in a world that doesn’t care for a 13-year-old’s tender heart and sensibilities, one that young boys have no place in.
So finally, belatedly, Joe can become a true grown-up, and do the right thing — remove the 13-year-old from ongoing tragedy.
This is in no way a commentary on the life of Vili Fualaau. May he have all the happiness in his new life. It’s just my take on a stunning, probably Oscar-nominated (to be) movie.
Thanks for reading.
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