Child abuse comedies have somewhat gone out of vogue since the glory days of Home Alone, but Todd Haynes is here to give the genre an overdue glow-up.

Based on a real case, May December (A Sky Original) is about a woman called Gracie (Julianne Moore) who had sex with a 13-year-old boy. 20 years, three kids and one jail stretch later, the pair are married and living in the same small town in Georgia. It may not sound ripe for comedy, but Haynes eschews the paedophile humour of Jingle All the Way for a sardonic psychodrama; less Big, more Big Little Lies.

Our route into Gracie’s home is with an actor (Natalie Portman) preparing to play the sex offender in a film. As a character she makes no sense, eating her meals with the family and wandering into the local high school to explain sex scenes to teenagers. But she is smartly positioned as a mirror for the media, obsessing over Gracie and salaciously stirring the pot in some dubious quest for “the truth.”

Indeed the movie is more interested in media depictions (it has a stinging payoff) than the human impact on the young husband (Charles Melton) and his almost equally young children. Exploited by both women, Joe is interestingly played by Melton, his adolescent body language stuck in the childhood he was denied. His realistic performance stands in contrast to the sickly camp of his female co-stars with their layers of makeup, speech affectations and irony. Portman is so bad that you wonder if she was only cast because she played a paedophile in Star Wars.

For all its silliness, May December proves a provocative and oddly affecting addition to the film calendar; a glossy catalogue of tabloid fixation and emotional abuse. Between this and Carol, Haynes is surely in the running for the next Predator movie.