Forget September, Todd Haynes has a trailer for May December

As the days grow shorter and the nights grow darker, all eyes turn toward the holidays, when we dust off our copies of Carol and remember all the good director Todd Haynes has brought the yuletide. Haynes is so into Christmas that he gifted us an early present: a trailer for his calendar-themed film May December. It’s not actually about calendars. Judging by the trailer, it’s more of a Hitchcockian drama in which Natalie Portman does her Black Swan thing on Julianne Moore.

May December stars Natalie Portman, who plays an actor researching a controversial new role as a real-life woman (Juliane Moore) who, 20 years earlier, groomed a 7th grader, had his child while in prison, and married her victim upon release. It’s a sadly familiar story in the U.S., with the movie drawing heavily from the story of Mary Kay Letourneau, a teacher who raped her 12-year-old student, had his baby, and married him. But the movie doesn’t only explore that situation. Halfway through the trailer, it’s revealed that Portman’s character is having an affair with Moore’s husband and that she needs to take over her subject’s life to get into character. May December is a complicated drama filled with melancholy, sadness, and beauty. In other words, it looks like a Todd Haynes movie.

May December is Haynes’ first movie since his 2021 documentary The Velvet Underground and his first narrative film since 2019’s Dark Waters. This year, we’ve been truly blessed with new movies from some of the greatest directors, including Greta Gerwig, Christopher Nolan, Wes Anderson, and Kelly Reichert. With new ones from Haynes, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, Sophia Coppola, Ridley Scott, David Fincher, Richard Linklater, and Alexander Payne on the horizon, cinephiles will be eating good for the rest of the year.

Since it’s a Netflix movie, May December is getting a short, perfunctory theatrical release in November. It will then be dumped onto the streamer on December 1.