“May December” dubbed “Gay Christmas” and stars Julianne More & Natalie Portman are here for it

Since it premiered on Netflix last Friday, out director Todd Haynes’s latest film May December has received a ton of critical acclaim. At once moving, unsettling, and bizarrely funny, the film is generating Oscar buzz as well as being hailed as something of a camp classic.

Earlier this week, USA Today’s Patrick Ryan went so far as to dub the film “basically Gay Christmas.”

Related: Christian conservatives call for a boycott of “Thor” for being too gay

Fans and critics, meanwhile, say the latest Marvel film is really not that gay at all.

Inspired by the 90s tabloid story of Mary Kay Letourneau and centering on an actress (Natalie Portman) prepping to play a woman (Julianne Moore) who was convicted of sexually abusing an adolescent boy and later married him, Ryan wrote that May December “seems tailor-made for men who love watching Oscar-winning actresses go toe to toe.”

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Deck the halls, because both those Oscar winners are very into the film being thought of as “Gay Christmas.”

“That should be our tagline,” Portman told USA Today.

When asked about the description by Attitude, Portman, Moore, and co-star Charles Melton all seemed delighted by it.

“I love that! That’s so good,” Moore laughed.

“That’s my dream. That’s my goal,” Portman said.

“I honestly think the gay community has amazing taste,” Moore added. “So I’m very flattered!”

“I think a lot of queerness, as far as I understand it, also has to do with stepping out of prescribed societal boundaries that are imposed upon you,” Portman said of the film’s queer subtext. “And I think both of these characters, both of these women, are so intent on writing their own narratives and declaring their own identity and creating their own story, and that’s really this dynamic between them that there is that, like, inherent queerness to it.”

“There’s a dynamic where seduction is one of the strategies they’re using to try and gain control over the narrative,” she continued.

“It’s really a struggle for dominance,” Moore added. “And they’ll use whatever they can. And I think they’re both seductive individuals too, and both know how to—very much know how to perform femininity. And I think one of the characteristics of performative femininity is seduction.”

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