I really liked this dark drama about an actress researching for her latest role but then after finishing it I went online to read up on what people had to say about it and discovered that it’s considered a comedy. That made me wonder if I even understood it correctly at all. In the end, I don’t think I was wrong though. Despite the overbearing horror music and the absurdity, I believe director Todd Haynes fully means for the audience to seriously engage with the topic. It’s unsettling, deeply uncomfortable for everyone and none of the characters are quite certain what to think of the situation themselves so it’s only to be expected that the audience will feel the same.

Actress Elizabeth Berry arrives in Savannah, Georgia to research her role in an upcoming film. She is to play Gracie Atherton-Yoo, a married woman who was caught having sex with a 13-year-old boy Joe Yoo and was imprisoned for it. Yet after her release, the two married and now 23 years later, they have three grown children together. Gracie and her family allow Elizabeth to interview them and observe their lives though they have concerns about how they will be portrayed in the film. At first glance, they seem like a perfectly happy family and it’s difficult to find fault in Gracie when she has already been punished by the law and the couple have stayed together for so long. But she also speaks with Tom, Gracie’s first husband, who was bewildered by the whole affair and believes that to this day Gracie thinks she did nothing wrong. Similarly her eldest son with Tom claims that she ruined his life. The more Elizabeth digs into Gracie, the more into it she gets. She visits the pet store where Gracie and Joe worked and simulates their sexual encounter in the stock room. At the same time, her questioning of all of the people around Gracie kindles old memories and possibly causes Joe to reexamine his relationship with her.

A sexual relationship between a 36-year-old woman and a 13-year-old boy is of course wrong and the woman is rightfully considered the predator no matter what the boy may have said or done at the time. Yet this takes place 24 years after the fact and Gracie has already been punished by society for her crime. All three of their children seem content and one is even offended when she realizes that Elizabeth is interested in the role because of the moral ambiguity surrounding her mother. Yet it also feels wrong to give Gracie a pass and treat hers as a normal family. She never expressed contrition for her actions and while some people describe her as being naive, there are also signs that she is manipulative and continues to manipulate Joe. Elizabeth struggles to find the one cornerstone that might explain why Gracie behaves the way she does. Some critics wrote that perhaps Haynes himself isn’t fully certain of what to make of such a person. Or perhaps the truth is merely that any person has so many layers to them that it is impossible to know if any one single explanation can be definitive. It’s a fascinating question to ponder.

The film is doubly disturbing in that Elizabeth too acts in bad faith. It’s one thing to go digging into Gracie’s life to understand how she thinks, it’s another to actively tempt Joe into replaying the initial seduction with her. She isn’t even interested in Joe’s well-being, merely in maximizing her own chances of making this her role of a lifetime. Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore but I think it is actually Charles Melton as Joe who is most interesting. Even though he is now an adult with grown children of his own, you can tell how he seems emotionally and socially stunted due to having been involved with Gracie from far too young an age. He simply hasn’t lived enough and the relationship remains imbalanced even after two decades being together. It’s a very effective way of showing that even in long-term relationships that appear stable and happy, the original sin of them having begun under such conditions is never absolved.

The music in this film is memorable, perhaps too much so as it’s so distracting, but the cinematography is unremarkable. This really is all about the taboo relationship at the heart of the film and the insight that we might never understand what makes someone tick no matter how hard we try. I wasn’t a big fan of Haynes’ previous work Carol, but I understand better now his particular obsessions and so like this one a fair bit more.