May December: Tabloids, Trauma and Tolstoy in the Age Gap Trope

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

I admit it: I love uncomfortable dramas—Ordinary People, The Squid and the Whale, and Buffalo 66 are a few of my favorites. These movies offer an unflinching examination of family dynamics, and I’m so here for that. Often, tropes are equated with generic storytelling, but that is far from the power of how to use tropes. Since they are found in every story, we can find them in darkly layered stories like May December.

May December isn’t a Christmas movie, yet it’s as if director Todd Haynes looked deeply into my sunlight-deprived soul this December and delivered my treat early—bonus points for having a trope in the title. Haynes uses Mary Kay LeTourneau’s life story as an unlikely inspiration for the age gap trope and an exploration of who defines a romance.

And what a twisted trope we have in May December! Twenty-three years after an explosive affair between a married mother (boss) and a seventh-grader (victim), the now-married couple have three college-aged students and are on the verge of becoming empty nesters (family, politics).

As Tolstoy reminds us in the quote above, people are complicated. I love that about humans; luckily, I’m not alone. Or, as I’m fond of repeating, complex story, simple plot—that’s our goal as storytellers.If you are not a paid member, you can read everything with a 7-day free trial, or give us a one-time tip.

The May December trope is another way to describe the age gap trope. It’s a common trope in heterosexual romance where the male is significantly older than the female. It’s a popular trope in romance. When the woman is older than the male in heterosexual romance, she is often called the cougar.

There is no utterance of the c-word around Julianne Moore’s Gracie. She is a velvet fist in an iron glove. In her floral aprons and with a beautiful smile, Gracie floats around baking cakes and arranging flowers. Appearances are everything to Gracie. She also demeans her husband, Joe, and the three young adult children they share. She lives in the same community (forced proximity) as her ex-husband and older children. The veneer of her world is challenged by Natalie Portman’s Elizabeth arriving to research her for an upcoming role (ticking time bomb). As an actress, Elizabeth probes into past and current events with little subtlety and less empathy.

Between these two alphaholes is the film’s most interesting character, Charles Melton’s Joe. He struggles to process his life events (loner, tortured soul) using his monarch butterfly habitat hobby, a new online friendship, and his twins’ graduation (ticking time bomb). Elizabeth’s questions prod him to wonder if his relationship with Gracie began as consensually as he’s always accepted (victim, secret, scars). When he dares to ask Gracie if he was too young when their affair started, her explosive reaction reveals what lurks below the surface between them (violence).

Here are some of the tropes in May December: age gap, alphahole, antagonist, best friends, boss, family, forced proximity, hidden identity, loner, politics, scar, secrets, redemption, tortured hero, victim, violence.

Let’s examine how goal, motivation, and conflict work with the age gap trope:

Elizabeth’s Goal: Unearth Gracie’s secrets about her life. Motivation: She’s prepping to play Gracie in a movie. Conflict: Gracie’s got her inner life locked down; she’s not sharing any secrets.

Gracie’s Goal: Share her version of her life. Motivation: be loved. Conflict: Her husband, Joe, begins questioning her version of their life, causing instability.

Joe’s Goal: Support Gracie’s and his family’s lifestyle. Motivation: family life has been his only identity. Conflict: his twins graduating high school make Joe question his whole life about Gracie and the kids, causing family instability.

Combining tropes and GMC, we have complex characters locked in power struggles. That gifts us with so much story potential.

Ultimately, the key to the age gap trope is understanding it’s all about a power imbalance. In this story, Gracie is the alpha, and her version of their life rules the family. As long as Joe is #TeamGracie, their married life is a true love story. Joe has always accepted this version. The Gracie Joe party line is they have an age gap romance love that transcends conventions (and the legal system).

The premise of the age gap trope in romance is that both parties benefit from the gap in experiences. Recently, Joe has begun to question this premise. That process causes the conflict at the heart of this story when he dares to ask Gracie, what if I was too young? It’s such a simple question buried under such a secret history, and bringing it into the light challenges their whole relationship.

Let’s consider using an age gap trope in our own stories. The key is which character has the power in the relationship and how they use it.

Mining that power gap between the characters is the conflict. The older character always has more life experience, and how that impacts the younger character is part of the relationship’s appeal (think of Jane Eyre as a traditional example of the age gap trope).

In this film, control is masked as love, and everyone has secrets. The effects of this May December trope ripple far beyond Gracie and Joe to their families and community. Gracie is ferocious about holding onto her happily ever after. By twisting the age gap trope to its extreme and flipping the usual gender roles, we’re left wondering, is this a romance for Joe?