Even the evening has an inviting velvetiness, as if all of life’s shadows have been banished. They meet when a TV actress, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), visits Gracie (Julianne Moore), the inspiration for her next role. Gracie lives in a large waterfront house in Savannah with her husband, Joe (Charles Melton), their teenage twins and two Irish setters. Of course I was: Haynes is having fun, at least for a while, partly to play with our expectations about where the movie is headed. That partly explains why he’s drawn to the woman’s film, with its focus on ordinary life, its domestic spaces, moral quandaries, political dimensions and tears.

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Persons: Todd Haynes’s, “, ”, Haynes, Elizabeth, Natalie Portman, Gracie, Julianne Moore, Joe, Charles Melton, He’s, he’s, Molly Haskell Locations: Savannah