The film begins with butterflies. Then there’s a stately government building before we visit a nice neighborhood with a house behind a white picket fence. What these seemingly disparate images have in common will be revealed but the often ominous movie soundtrack tells us, despite these pretty images “May December” is not a happy tale.

Written by Samy Burch (her first feature film)  and directed by Todd Haynes (“Carol,” 2015), “May December” re-imagines the Mary Kay Letourneau-Vili Fualaau  May-December forbidden and illegal romance scandal as a “Pet shop romance” with a seventh grader as the father of a “baby born behind bars” and that’s telegraphed to us by an actress reading a tabloid as part of her research.

Actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) is in Savannah, Georgia to interview and research the relationship between Gracie Atherton (Julianne Moore) and Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) for her upcoming role in an independent film. Admitting that she likes playing difficult characters, Elizabeth later tells a group of high school students that she tries to figure out: “Were they born (this way) or were they made?”

In 1992, 23 years ago, the 36-year-old Gracie was caught having sex with the 13-year-old Joe Yoo in the stockroom of a pet store where they both worked. Gracie had hired Joe. Joe was a schoolmate but not a friend of Gracie’s son Georgie (Cory Michael Smith). Gracie was still married to Tom (D. W. Moffett). After the scandal broke, Tom divorced Gracie. After Gracie was released from jail, she and Joe got married and Gracie became Gracie Atherton-Yoo. The hyphenated surname is the one their children use.

Elizabeth meets Tom, Georgie and Gracie’s defense attorney for research, but also insinuates herself into the lives of Gracie and Joe. Gracie and Joe will soon have an empty nest. Their eldest child Honor (Piper Curda) is in college and their twins Charlie (Gabriel Chung) and Mary (Elizabeth Yu) are graduating from high school. Joe seems lost, focusing on his hobby of raising Monarch butterflies.

Joe and Elizabeth are the same age, but Elizabeth has no children. Elizabeth like Gracie seems to have problems with boundaries. Elizabeth also sometimes acts inappropriately, but is she so naive? Gracie is described by her friends as naive and passive.  But was she?

If you don’t remember, in 1996 a 34-year-old school teacher Mary Kay Letourneau at Shorewood Elementary in Burien, a Seattle suburb, began a sexual affair with her 12-year-old student, Samoan American Vili Fualaau. Letourneau was pregnant with Fualaau’s child when she pled guilty to two counts of second-degree child rape. She gave birth while awaiting her sentencing. When she was released from prison, she again hooked up with Fualaau who was still a minor and she was sent back to jail. She gave birth to their second child in jail. When she was finally released, they married as he was no longer a minor. They regained custody of their two children who had been in the custody of Fualaau’s mother. Letourneau claimed she had no idea that having a sex with a minor was a crime. “If someone had told me, if anyone had told me, there is a specific law that says this is a crime I did not know.” Letourneau died in 2020 at age 58 of cancer; she was legally separated from Vili Fualaau.

• May December : Where is Vili Fualaau Now?

There’s not much information about Fualaau’s family, but I wonder if script of “May December” makes much sense within a Korean American community. I’m not saying that I know much about Samoan Americans (or Georgia), but I am somewhat familiar with the Korean American community in Los Angeles and South Korea. Rewatching the film, the sequence that introduces us to this couple, a barbecue to which the actress on a research mission enters the story, is devoid of cultural references to the Korean American or even East Asian American communities.

Yes, we would have hot dogs and hamburgers and even corn on the cob, but also something that is culturally linked to picnics and house parties in East Asia. For the Japanese Americans, it would be teriyaki chicken or spare ribs, futomaki or inari sushi, cucumber salad, etc.  For Korean Americans, I would imagine Korean-style barbecue beef and kimchi. The barbecue portrayed in the film is so White that it’s as if Joe’s cultural context has been obliterated.

The year this film “May December” takes place is 2015 and “Gangnam Style” (강남스타일) had already hit the charts, going viral in August 2012. It reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100, the highest a song by a South Korean artist had ever gone at the time. The Wonder Girls were the first K-pop act to chart the Billboard Hot 100 in 2009 (“Nobody”). BTS formed in 2010.  BTS has a fan base in Georgia. According to the 2020 US Census, more than 71,000 Korean Americans reside in Georgia. According to Georgia.org, “The counties of Gwinnett, Fulton, and DeKalb have become home to vibrant and prospering Korean communities.” Savannah is in Chatham County. 

In the scenario that this film sets up, at least in 1992,  there weren’t many Korean Americans in the neighborhood. Gracie recalls, “They were the only Korean family in the neighborhood” and Joe reminds her, they were “half.” Still, were there no Korean restaurants in Savannah?  Korean food is certainly more familiar to US audiences than say Samoan cuisine even though Samoa is a US territory.

For the curious, current demographics of Savannah, Georgia are 52% Black or African American, 39 percent White, Asian is 2.5% and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander is 0.1%. Seattle demographics are quite different with White at 63.6%, Latino/Hispanic at 7.5%, Black/African American 6.7%, Asian at 16.8% and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander at 0.2%.

This quibble about the presence of Asian American culture in a part Asian American household doesn’t take away from Melton’s performance, but rather, it calls to question the depth of research by the screenwriter and the director. Melton’s performance is sensitive, his Joe’s warmth is defused by confusion. Both Portman and Moore give us troubled women who seem dependent, but are also manipulative. Portman’s Elizabeth and Moore’s Gracie are both beautiful and repellent. Similarly, the film itself contradicts the problematic stereotype that East Asian men are not attractive while erasing cultural references.

“May December” made its world premiere at the 76th Cannes Film Festival 20 May 2023. It had a limited release on 17 November 2023 and started streaming on Netflix 1 December 2023.