May (2002): B

A patchwork of Dario Argento, Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day, and Mary Shelley, Lucky McKee’s May is all gouged eyes and severed limbs, cannibal love and stitched-together monstrosities. Forced by her mother to hide her lazy eye behind a pirate’s patch as a child, May (Angela Bettis) grew up an outcast whose only friend was a handmade doll encased in a glass box (a subtle reflection of May’s emotional isolation). Years later working as a vet’s surgical assistant, May remains lonely, socially awkward and full-blown “weird,” the latter of which proves initially appealing to mechanic Adam (Jeremy Sisto) – a guy whose apartment boasts a shrine to Argento’s Opera – until he discovers that May’s strangeness extends far past his own threshold for the bizarre. As May obsesses, with unnatural lasciviousness, over Adam’s perfect hands and slutty lesbian co-worker Polly’s (Anna Farris) beautiful neck, McKee’s film exudes an off-kilter storybook vibe while freely appropriating all sorts of classic horror genre symbols and conventions. Whether the first-time writer/director is simply paying homage to such tropes or slyly utilizing them as some sort of deconstructionist gesture is often unclear, though it comes as a disappointment to find his story’s final Frankenstein-ian twist weakened by the wealth of preceding hints. Yet as a portrait of repressed desires-set-bloodily-free, May nonetheless benefits from bursts of gory black humor (such as an early scene involving a dog’s leg) as well as Bettis' riveting performance – carved with equal slices of creepy hesitancy and introverted anguish – as the titular eccentric.

Comments

[Robert Seaton]

Interesting... I recently featured May as movie of the week on my own blog, http://horror-movie.org/wp/2011/04/feature-of-the-week-may-2002/