It’s long been clear that filmmaker Todd Haynes is a master of manipulating tone for delightfully acts of cinematic chicanery. To this point, this most potent manifestation of that talent was surely Far from Heaven, his 2002 film that gently warped the bygone Technicolor melodramas, like those of director Douglas Sirk, into a shape where affectionate ribbing and bone-deep sincerity were somehow exactly the same. Realistically, though, his disarming approach is present in practically every last one of his films. While always guiding his narratives with an unerring commitment to truthfulness, Haynes allows that emotions are complicated and combustible, which in turn leads to art that is dedicated to swaddling the viewer in uncertainty.

The latest from Haynes, May December, represents a new pinnacle of dervish-like disconcertion. The story finds actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman, as good as she’s ever been on screen) visiting Savannah, Georgia. She is there to research a new role in a docudrama that depicts a scandalous affair that took place between a woman in her thirties and boy who had barely crossed into his teens. More than twenty years later, the twosome, Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton), are still together, married and raising a family in a giant, well-appointed house that is usually unseen outside of a Nancy Meyers movie. With trepidation, Gracie and Joe invite Elizabeth into their lives, voicing hopes that their openness will result in the sort of sympathetic portrayal that was previous denied them in the press and in other fictionalized portraits of their forbidden romance. On some level, maybe they just like the attention of a famous movie star.

The screenplay is by Samy Burch (with Alex Mechanik sharing a story credit), and it has the danger and stealth of a well-palmed shiv. As Elizabeth probes into the lives of Gracie and Joe, it becomes increasingly clear that there are churning troubles below the placid surface they present. By extension, the film suggests that most versions of self are grounded in deception, and most human connections are therefore based in rickety mythologizing that is always in danger of toppling at the first puff of actual honesty. Haynes realizes these themes with a savage ruthlessness and a caustic sense of humor. He also miraculously leaves space for moments that are kind, sympathetic, and even sweet, those qualities highlighting especially in the performance of Melton, who slowly reveals the degree to which Joe was never allowed to progress past being a lost, and thus highly susceptible, little boy.

Haynes brings an astonishing level of craft to May December. There’s the sharp, ravishing cinematography of Christopher Blauvelt, a regular collaborator with director Kelly Reichardt, and pinpoint editing of Affonso Gonçalves. The score is adapted by Marcelo Zarvos from Michel Legrand’s original music for the 1971 British drama The Go-Between, and Haynes deploys it the way that parallels how French New Wave directors routinely shoved their technique to the forefront in an effort to reveal the mechanics of their magic tricks as they performed them. Haynes is up to the same thing, I think. Haynes calls attention to the choices he makes — including in giving Portman and Moore the green light to deliver performances defined by big, compelling sweeps of actorly expression — as a challenge to himself, an elevation of the degree of difficulty in the work. Can his movie practice the same muddying masquerades as the characters it depicts and still have resonance, meaning, and even heart? I’m not confident any other director working today could pull that off, but Haynes sure does.