This Week

• One of the year’s best acting performances.

• I screamed at this Christmas commercial. 

• I cried at this Christmas commercial. 

• England’s must-see new play.

• The best celebrity statement I’ve ever seen.

Attention, Oscar Voters

There are times when you sit down to watch a movie and, almost immediately, you know you’re in. In the case of May December, that happened after about five minutes, when Julianne Moore opens a refrigerator, a dramatic music cue plays, director Todd Haynes zooms in on her face, and Moore says with utmost seriousness, bordering on terror, “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs.”

This moment spoke to me because I, too, often fear that we don’t have enough hot dogs. (That’s not a joke.) But it also set up what would be the film’s magic trick. It’s a tense drama about what’s to be gained and lost by dredging up secrets from the past, and also a darkly comedic thriller. It is campy without being ridiculous, yet almost shocking in its willingness to be goofy. And it is somehow both soapy and deadpan—played so straight and, sometimes even, listlessly, that the major story beats end up crashing through the screen like a wrecking ball. 

Haynes’ film, which is now on Netflix, is one of the best of the year, delivering what the youths I follow on social media would call a “mother-off” between Moore and Natalie Portman, who perform a delicious dance of sisterhood and suspicion. While they are as great as you’d expect—I pulled out my best Oprah impression as I skipped out of the theater: “You get an Oscar nod! You get an Oscar nod!”—my favorite performance was from Riverdale star Charles Melton. In a film full of surprises, the combination of this unexpected casting and the fascinating levels of emotionality Melton brings to the role is one of its cleverest. 

May December is loosely inspired by Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher who made headlines in the ’90s after she had an affair with her 12-year-old student Vili Fualaau, had children with him, and later married him. If it wasn’t directly based on this case, there’s no audience member who wouldn’t make the obvious connection. Although, maybe that’s not true; I had a particularly harrowing conversation with a younger colleague in the industry who informed me he had never heard of Letourneau before. At that point, my knees creaked, my back gave out, my hair instantly turned gray, and I began yelling at strangers to “get off my lawn,” despite, in fact, not having a lawn. What must it be like, I wonder, to have gone through life without that woman’s face plastered on every grocery-checkout tabloid and TV screen?

In this film, Moore plays Gracie, who became the center of a national scandal when, at age 36, she was caught having sex with 13-year-old Joe at the pet store where they worked. It’s now 2015, and Gracie and Joe (Melton) have been together for 23 years, are married with children of their own, and are seemingly settled post-controversy in their community in Savannah. There’s going to be a movie made about their relationship, and the actress cast as Gracie, Portman’s Elizabeth, arrives to shadow Gracie and meet the family.

Her presence and her digging dredges up memories from the past that Gracie and Joe purport to have left behind, especially with their twins about to graduate high school. Of course, that’s not the case. Especially when it comes to Joe, we see the toll that repression has taken, and the clarity that was stolen from him because he was so young when signed on for this life. 

Throughout the film, Haynes employs jolts of humor to create distance from the monstrousness of the film’s subject matter. That’s mischievous in its own right, creating an even more upsetting impact when we’re forced to confront the darkness head-on. When we meet Joe, Melton plays him at a fascinating juncture between arrested development and dutiful father figure; he’s so juvenile that Gracie still takes care of him, but tangibly wizened after two decades of raising children. 

As an audience, you’re tempted to assume he’s emotionally stunted at the age the affair began. So much so, that any moment that hints at Joe being a manchild elicits huge laughs—one moment in a hotel room with Elizabeth, particularly. But that just intensifies the tragedy. Elizabeth’s digging forces him to excavate all the questions, confusions, and frustrations that he hasn’t just bottled for 23 years, but which have fermented and complicated as he’s gotten older and earned perspective. 

His struggle to articulate them—to even feel them—is devastating; you see both the abused child and the resilient man, each needing closure that he’s not sure how to seek. Are we watching a 13-year-old unfamiliar with how to express such extreme emotions, his body trembling and uncomfortable as they combust? Or are we seeing a grown man terrified to unleash the darkness of the past, unsure of what would happen to him—and to his family—if he does?

There’s an element of “who knew?” to the fawning over Melton’s complicated, stunning work in these scenes. He’s best known for Riverdale, a gloriously ludicrous teen drama that isn’t exactly the kind of series you’d expect a prestige film director to cast his next star from, putting him in scenes with Oscar winners. The teen soap-to-Oscar movie pipeline is well-traveled, from Michelle Williams (Dawson’s Creek) to Shailene Woodley (Secret Life of an American Teenager). But we still have our biases that leave us amazed when it happens. I think Haynes is shrewdly playing with those expectations with this casting: Joe’s complexity is underestimated, so that when he does break down, it’s unmooring. On a meta level, who’d have thought the guy from Riverdale would pull that off, and how fun is it to lavish in the success now that he did?

Melton has already won the Gotham and New York Film Critics Circle Awards for his work. Here’s hoping that the rest of awards season is fully stocked with hot dogs.

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The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It is my favorite time of year. I love the coziness of Christmas. I love the desire to indulge and celebrate. I even love the tinges of melancholy that creep into the merriment—it makes the season more dynamic and human. Most of all, though, I love the incest. 

What was that? You’re not familiar with that last holiday tradition? Allow me to explain: One of my absolute favorite parts of every year is when the Folgers coffee commercial “Coming Home” resurfaces on social media. I have seen it countless times. I watch it each time it comes across my timeline. And each one of those times, I am still rendered speechless, flabbergasted, and stunned by what I’ve just watched. 

If you’re unfamiliar, “Coming Home” began airing in 2009 and ran for three years before being preserved on YouTube as internet legend. (Watch it here.)

The commercial starts with an attractive man being dropped off at a suburban house for the holidays after a presumably long time being away in, we later learn, “West Africa.” He smells the Folgers coffee brewing and pours a cup, and then hands his sister a wrapped gift. She grins and pulls the bow off, placing it on his chest. “You’re my present,” she says, smiling at him with a tinge of naughtiness. He grins back flirtatiously. You, at thome, scream in horror: “ARE THESE SIBLINGS ABOUT TO FUCK???”

It is baffling that no one at Folgers caught on to the palpable eroticism of the commercial and the bizarre sexual chemistry between its actors. There’s a fun oral history of the ad in GQ, where everyone involved claims to have been blindsided by the reaction to it. After anyone’s first viewing, it’s impossible to see the commercial as being heartwarming (as intended), and anything but foreplay between two people who are about to rip each other’s clothes off and get down and dirty by the fireplace. It is one of my favorite pieces of holiday content.

Grab a Kleenex

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the horny travesty that is Folgers’ “Coming Home” is Chevrolet’s new commercial, “A Holiday to Remember.” (Watch it here.)

While inexplicably five minutes long and, at first, alarmingly corny, it eventually becomes so beautiful that you will absolutely cry. A grandmother who appears to have Alzheimer’s is having “more bad days than good,” so, on Christmas while everyone is getting ready for dinner, her granddaughter goes up to her and says, “Let’s have a good day.” As John Denver’s “Sunshine on My Shoulders” plays, they drive past all the locations of the grandmother’s fondest memories, with her perking up and coming more alive after each stop. 

Finally, she reunites with her husband, the two of them breaking down in tears, replicating exactly what was happening on my couch as I watched it. The best part? Not a single sibling came on to another. 

The Must-See Event of the Season

It has come to my attention that Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Dorit Kemsley will be performing in a stage production of Peter Pan in the U.K., with Boy George as Captain Hook and her children as two of the Lost Boys. She will, apparently, be playing a mermaid, a role I do not even recall from Peter Pan, but which has earned her major billing on the production’s poster nonetheless. 

Beyond “What in the world?” and “Whose idea with this?,” the most pressing question surrounding this news is: “Who is going to fly Kevin to England to see this?” ’Tis the season for giving!

We Are Now Sabrina Carpenter Stans

There was a mini saga this week when a priest who allowed Sabrina Carpenter, a pop star who I had barely heard of but is now the source of my extreme obsessions and devotion, to film a music video in a Brooklyn church. He was apparently relieved of his administrative duties after it was revealed that Carpenter’s “Feather” filmed there. 

In response to the controversy, Carpenter told Variety, “We got approval in advance, and Jesus was a carpenter.” Stunning. Perfect. Never has there been a greater “statement” made about a scandal. No notes. This is now a Sabrina Carpenter fan newsletter.

More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed 

Everyone’s talking about Saltburn, but the “shock” over the movie has gotten out of control. Read more.

Legendary action filmmaker John Woo is giving Hollywood another shot with his new movie Silent Night, and we got to talk to him about it. Read more.

The surprising reason why The Simpsons fans fear replacing the show’s voice actors. Read more.

• Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé: We knew this was going to be good. But it’s like good good. As in, like, a masterpiece. (Now in theaters)

• Family Switch: Jennifer Garner in a new body-swap comedy? Be still my 13 Going on 30-loving heart. (Now on Netflix)

• The Artful Dodger: What if Charles Dickens had seen Grey’s Anatomy? He might have written The Artful Dodger. (Now on Hulu)

• Candy Cane Lane: Eddie Murphy, you are getting nothing but coal in your stocking this year. (Now on Prime Video)

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