Early on in the latest film from director Todd Haynes (Carol, Far from Heaven, Dark Waters), Julianne Moore throws open a fridge door dramatically. Staring into the cold light, the camera suddenly zooms in on Moore’s face as a charged chord on the piano is struck. The effect is so dramatic you wouldn’t be surprised if a severed head was inside the refrigerator. “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs,” she utters, completely deadpan, as the close-up shot lingers unsettlingly. This moment of high-camp melodrama signals that May December may not be the movie you expect, given that it draws inspiration from a shocking true story

Moore plays Gracie, a figure loosely based on Mary Kay Letourneau, an American woman who was convicted of the second-degree rape of a child in 1997. That child was her then 12-year-old student, whom she later married and had two children with. The tabloids were gripped for years by the highly publicised story, which here receives a clever spin from Haynes and screenwriter Samy Burch

Rather than offering a conventional retelling of events, May December imagines a fictionalised scenario with a comparable couple, set 20 years after the initial incident. Seemingly happy, their relationship starts to buckle when an actress, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), arrives to do research for a film she’s making about their lives

May December follows actress Elizabeth as she visits the Savannah home of Gracie  and Joe (Charles Melton), the couple whose relationship, such as it were, began when Gracie was a married mother of two and Joe was a 13-year-old schoolboy. After being arrested for sexual abuse, Gracie went to jail for a few years, where she gave birth to Joe’s daughter. Soon after she was released, the pair reunited, adding a set of twins to the mix. Two decades later, the family’s scandal’s past has somewhat faded – though Elizabeth’s visit threatens to stir repressed memories and strain marital tensions

As such, May December occupies something of a morally grey space. On the one hand, the sensitive subject matter makes for an incredibly uncomfortable watch in places; on the other, it’s incredibly entertaining. The film thrives on fascinating juxtapositions, Haynes striking a keen balance between true-life complexities and theatrical melodrama

The essential outline of Samy Burch’s screenplay has Elizabeth representing all of us as voyeurs, wondering what life was like inside that marriage, how these two seemingly ordinary people could emerge from the tumult to live a seemingly ordinary life

May December is often weirdly funny: The swoonily gorgeous soundtrack (adapted from a 1971 score by Michel Legrand, for the movie The Go-Between) becomes a character, heightening emotions to the point of absurdity. But it’s also a showcase for three devastating performances: Moore’s Gracie seems so fragile you wonder if she might crumble before our eyes; Portman’s Elizabeth eyes her with an almost vampiric hunger; Melton’s Joe, droopy and murmuring, seems a faint sketch of a man. The movie-within-a-movie’s final scene has an eerie inevitability to it; in it, life, art and something terribly dark merge. We watch, increasingly uncomfortable, but can’t look away

Go see it!