Elizabeth will be playing Gracie Atherton-Yoo, who, in 1992 at the age of 36, was caught raping 13-year-old Joe Yoo, a schoolmate of her son Georgie, at the pet store where they both worked.

Twenty-three years later, Gracie and Joe are married with three children: Honor, who is at college, and twins Charlie and Mary, who are about to graduate from high school.

Visiting the pet store where the couple met, Elizabeth sees the stock room where Gracie and Joe were caught having sex and reenacts the scene alone.

Elizabeth participates in a Q&A at the twins' high school and discusses the intimacy actors and crew members feel when shooting a sex scene.

Screenwriter Samy Burch outlined the script with her husband, Alex Mechanik, and completed the screenplay on Memorial Day, 2019.

[14][15] Haynes's longtime collaborator Edward Lachman was initially going to serve as cinematographer, but was replaced by Christopher Blauvelt after injuring his hip.

[17] While not a direct adaptation, he also stated that the Mary Kay Letourneau scandal "became very, very helpful to get very specific about the research, and we learned things from that relationship".

The website's consensus reads: "Swaddling its difficult fact-based story in a blanket of campy humor, May December is a seductively discomfiting watch.

[42] In his review following its Cannes premiere, Peter Debruge of Variety called May December an "endlessly fascinating movie" and added, "As layered and infinitely open-to-interpretation as any of [Haynes's] films, it's also the most generous and direct [...] The potential for passion, transformation and subversion hangs heavy in the air".

[44] The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw found the film "amusing and elegant [...] delivered with a cool, shrewd precision by Todd Haynes" and described Portman and Moore's performances as containing "a potent frenmity".

[45] Bilge Ebiri of Vulture called May December "very funny and light on its feet, but also a deeply uncomfortable movie", writing that Haynes "uses the trappings of camp to draw attention to the disconnect between what's happening onscreen and our response to it", and concluding: "It feels at times like the director himself [is] looking for the right tone with which to tell this story.

"It's an inscrutable well of interpersonal grievances, power imbalances, and history, a perfect breeding ground for sharp work from screen icons Portman and Moore, the latter in her fifth film with Haynes," they wrote.

"But while the two are competing to see how much cringe and humor one can conceivably fit into a movie about sexual assault and grooming, there's Melton off to the side, quietly stealing the show.

"[47] Carlos Boyero of El País wrote that Todd Haynes's approach to telling the story "makes it petty, and pointlessly pretentious".

[54][55] EJ Dickson of Rolling Stone cited the Academy's pattern to exclude actors of Asian descent and their lack of acknowledgement to performers under the age of 40 as the reasons Melton was not nominated.