Earlier this year, at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, one film competing for the top prize caught our attention more than most. May December is the latest offering from Todd Haynes, — who emerged as a progenitor of the New Queer Cinema movement in the early 90s’, carving out a rich career pivoting between romantic and psychological dramas and music-focused features thereafter. Known for his mastery of emotion, his foregrounding of transgressive sexualities, and his keen eye for detail — particularly when it comes to costume and set design — he’s arguably one of America’s most talented auteurs working today.
His 10th feature, May December, is the story of an actress who travels to Maine to shadow a woman she is to play in a film. The woman in question had inspired a tabloid obsession some 20 years prior after engaging in a romantic relationship that gripped the nation. Produced by long-time collaborator Christine Vachon (Kids; Boys Don’t Cry), the film stars Natalie Portman (Black Swan) alongside long-time muse Julianne Moore — who received her third Oscar nomination after appearing in his forbidden romance feature Far From Heaven in 2002.
With the film set to premiere this weekend before it becomes available to stream on Netflix on 1 December, in anticipation we’ve compiled a primer of works to get familiar with the filmmaker’s esteemed canon.
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The entry point is… Safe (1995)
It’s 1987, and affluent homemaker Carol White (Julianne Moore — in her first leading role) is living a monotonous life in an idyllic suburb in Los Angeles. She preens the garden of her modernist home wearing yellow marigolds; attends spandex-clad exercise classes at a health club; and dines al fresco at cafés with white doily table covers. Every radio station blasts ebullient 80s’ power-pop as her life of pink pencil skirts, pearl necklaces and perms appears to actualise the American dream — at least, until a mysterious illness prompts her to seek salvation at a New Age community in the desert.
This dreamlike psychological drama is as captivating as it is haunting — with meticulous production design and detached camerawork seemingly draining all emotion from Carol’s superficially perfect life. With Brendan Dolan and Ed Tomney’s eerie, droning score further accentuating the sense of disconnection, this second feature from Todd is confounding from start to finish — ultimately arriving at an ambiguous and unnerving conclusion.
Widely acclaimed upon release, the film was later voted as the best film of the decade by the Village Voice Film Poll — it remains arguably the director’s most essential work.
The one everyone has seen… Carol (2015)
Whereas Safe remains an arthouse essential, Carol — which arrived two decades later — would be Todd Haynes’ mainstream masterpiece.
Based on the 1952 novel The Price of Salt, written by queer author Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train; The Talented Mr. Ripley) and inspired by true events, Carol depicts a forbidden attraction in 50s’ America between a wealthy divorcee (Cate Blanchett) battling for custody of her child, and a young store clerk and aspiring photographer (Rooney Mara). Hesitant fawning soon leads to the suggestion of romance, with the outcome described as “the lesbian love story of the year” by i-D at the time of release.
Shot on grainy 16mm, with a yellow glow accentuating the film’s nostalgic look, this sumptuous and sophisticated film excels thanks to its rich production design, iconic fashion, and an elegant, piano-based score by Carter Burwell (who was nominated for an Academy Award this year for his work on The Banshees of Inisherin). The winner of the Queer Palm award at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, Carol also received nine BAFTA nominations and six Oscar nominations — with its omission from the Best Picture and Best Director categories at the latter ceremony the subject of criticism at the time.
Necessary viewing… Velvet Goldmine (1998)
Todd’s cosmic glam rock parable wasn’t a hit when it was released in 1998. With a mediocre box office return resulting from middling reviews, critics couldn’t make up their minds whether it was the Citizen Kane of Cool Britannia or a cerebral, meandering fan-fiction. But it didn’t take long for Velvet Goldmine to become the director’s biggest cult film — foreshadowing several further music-focused ventures hereafter.
It’s easy to understand the appeal: this re-imagination of the lives of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed — through the legend of fictional, bisexual, glam rock superstar Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) — is packed with audiovisual treasures. They range from a superfluous wardrobe combining glitter make-up, feather boas, and platform shoes (which won Sandy Powell a BAFTA for Best Costume Design) to an incredible soundtrack comprising Roxy Music, Brian Eno, and The Stooges. Elsewhere, then-newbie actors Ewan McGregor, Christian Bale, and Toni Collette take on cameo roles as 90s rock band members from the likes of Placebo and Radiohead.
Ultimately it’s the rock ’n’ roll decadence that makes Velvet Goldmine so enduring — with androgyny and debauchery soaked in saturated stage lights at rock clubs and arenas throughout. Todd may not have achieved his goal to “turn every gay person straight and every straight person gay” via the film the first time around, but he did deliver a modern musical classic.
The under-appreciated gem is… The Velvet Underground (2021)
A passion for music would fuel a number of idiosyncratic projects across Todd’s career. After Velvet Goldmine, he loosely dramatised the life of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There in 2007 — a film in which six different actors (including Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, and Cate Blanchett) portray a character that represents the legendary singer-songwriter. And in 2021, he presented a chronicle of the life and times of influential avant-garde rock group The Velvet Underground — largely in split-screen format.
Comprising rarely-seen archive footage, new and old band member interviews, and testimonies from fans and contemporaries (including David Bowie and the brilliantly enthusiastic Jonathan Richman), The Velvet Underground acts almost like an oral history of New York’s greatest band. The stories are the beating heart of the movie — like that of a young John Cale taking an axe to a piano during an experimental performance; the band’s ill-fated trip to the West Coast at the height of hippie mania; and Lou Reed “going crazy” and firing manager Andy Warhol. But Todd’s stylistic approach is what elevates the film above your standard rockumentary.
Collages of saturated colour and black-and-white footage are layered, cross-faded, and fast-forwarded, resulting in an experimental but sophisticated audiovisual work that matches the ethos of the band — whose screeching, droning music provides the soundtrack. The work was deemed worthy of presentation at Cannes in 2021; you’ll now find the only feature documentary of Todd’s career on Apple TV+ and Criterion Blu-ray.
The deep cut is… Poison (1991)
Todd’s feature directorial debut — which tells three concurrent stories in three different styles — makes for a more transgressive viewing experience than most of his later works. But there’s much to appreciate in this avant-garde introduction — which won the 1991 Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize, and the Teddy Award (for LGBT-themed works) for Best Feature Film at the 1991 Berlin Film Festival.
The film’s triage combines a black-and-white horror noir about a scientist who contracts leprosy; a folk-infused adaption of Jean Genet’s Miracle of the Rose, about a homosexual prisoner; and a documentary fiction about a missing boy who murdered his father and then took flight, never to be seen again. Read between the lines and you’ll find commentaries on the AIDS epidemic, child abuse, and other kinds of intolerance and persecution.
The film would prove controversial upon its release — as did many of the works that made up the early 90s’ New Queer Cinema movement (see also: Tom Kalin’s Swoon and Gregg Araki’s The Living End). Most famously, Poison was the subject of an attack by Reverend Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, who condemned the “explicit porno scenes of homosexuals involved in anal sex” — which, in fact, did not appear anywhere in the film.
This article was originally published on 17 May 2023 and has since been updated.