Elizabeth is a well-known TV actress and a perfectionist in her work. She travels to the state of Georgia to research her next role. In the months to come, as she prepares to play Gracie, she will be confronted with an old tabloid scandal that continues to simmer two decades after it happened. On the East Coast, she meets Gracie and her husband Joe for the first time – they are raising their children together, have barbecues with the neighbours, and pursue their hobbies. The picture of a happy family, Elizabeth thinks to herself. There is only the fact that the couple met when Gracie was 36 and Joe just 13, when he was in her son’s class. 

Couched in a morally dubious, paedophilistic tale and peppered with tabloid headlines and friendly camp humour, Todd Haynes’ (Carol, 2015) latest melodrama is one of the best American independent films of the year. It possesses a self-ironic sweetness that alternates with the sour notes of sin and the bitter perversity of curiosity. Having screened in the main competition of the Cannes Film Festival and garnering instant attention, it is a philosophically capacious critique of exploitative media, print, television and, yes, also cinema, performed by three superb actors: Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman and Charles Melton (from the Netflix series Riverdale). Each of the actors gives their character an unmistakable, indecipherable outline – they overflow, mirroring (a cheeky parallel to Bergman’s Persona,1966) and “consuming” each other. All this boils down to a question: can those who desire the truth also truly appreciate it?