When it comes to the weird girl subgenre, 2002’s May is arguably the film that defines it. Written and directed by Lucky McKee, the film is both a quirky and terrifying film that tells the story of a young woman named May as she tries to build relationships despite her odd personality. What makes May so compelling and heartbreaking is seeing May’s negative view of herself. Not only does it affect how she communicates with others, it feeds into a deep desire for others to see her as she truly is and creates a strong fear of rejection. May is a film about a young woman’s struggle with self-perception and self- acceptance.
May’s negative self-perception starts at a young age. Her mother values appearances. She is always perfectly kept, with not a single hair out of place and not a single wrinkle in her clothes. May wears an eye patch to cover her lazy eye as a child, and instead of using it to help her process her eye in a healthy way, her mother wants May to wear the patch so she can look perfect and implies that she won’t find friends if she doesn’t. The children May grows up with don’t understand why she wears an eye patch, and she grows up lonely and isolated. Her mother gives her a doll she made named Suzie, telling her “If you can’t find a friend, make one,” a lesson that will stay with May forever. Suzie is kept in a glass case. May is thrilled to have a friend, but when she tries to take her out to form a connection with her, her mother will not let her, telling her that Suzie belongs in the case. Again, May’s mother holds high standards of perfection for May, even when it comes to a doll, something that May should be allowed to play with and enjoy. There is a barrier up between May and her mother, similar to the glass case between May and Suzie, preventing May’s mother from being a source of comfort and nurturing to May, and this barrier contributes to May’s further struggles with connecting with others and finding acceptance in herself. Even as she grows up, May refuses to take Suzie out of her case, showing how much her mother’s influence still has a hold on her after all these years.
As an adult, May is an awkward, lonely, and naive young woman desperate for human connection. May has a fear of being too weird for others, partially because of her lazy eye and partially because of who she is as a person. She’s been disappointed by others before, and she retreats into a fantasy world to protect herself. Here, in the world she has created, Suzie is her best and only friend. May tells Suzie that she is the only person who has truly seen her and always has. May can truly be herself around Suzie and not have to worry about rejection or hostility because she can control Suzie’s thoughts and response. She will never be too weird for Suzie, and Suzie will always be ready to accept her exactly as she is, no questions asked. This has been enough for May for the time being, but she has realized that she needs actual human connection, someone she can hold. She especially wants this after meeting Adam.
May’s infatuation with Adam is similar to a teenage girl’s. She idealizes him and puts him on a pedestal. It’s as if she thinks that he has to be as beautiful a person as his hands are. Her interactions with him are painfully awkward and as they get to know each other, it is very clear that she, when considering how she perceives herself through his eyes, thinks she is not good enough for him. As mentioned before, May worries she is too weird for other people, and she seeks reassurance from him that he likes her as she is. She is especially overjoyed to know that he likes “weird a lot.” It seems like May could have even found a good match – Adam likes Argento films and has horror props in his room. He makes horny cannibal films. None of this scares May away, and in fact it makes him more attractive to her. She feels reassured that he will accept her as she is, and she starts to open herself up to him more. However, her perspective on their relationship is still shrouded in fantasy – she asks Suzy for dating advice, plays with her dolls acting out their date, and practices kissing with her hand while twirling around in her room. She crosses the line a few times, totally unaware of normal boundaries, and it gets to be too much for Adam. The delusion May has built up comes crashing down, and her negative self-perception rears its ugly head. Whenever this happens, she takes it out on Suzie. She screams at Suzie, physically attacks the glass case, and at one point even tells her she hates her. Cracks on the case start to form like there’s a massive weight placed on it. It’s apparent that Suzy is more than a protective fantasy of a friend who truly accepts May, she is also a reflective surface showing her the things she truly hates about herself. May is shut off from the rest of the world due to her weirdness; kept in her own case watching everyone else and not being able to reach out and hold anyone like she wants to. The crushing blow comes when she drops by Adam’s house unannounced and overhears him calling her a “lunatic.” This confirms her worst fears about herself and further warps how she sees herself.
One curious aspect of May’s self-perception is her queerness. When May is rejected by Adam, she seeks comfort in Polly. Before this moment, May doesn’t seem to acknowledge the possibility she may be queer, nor does she really notice or respond to Polly’s obvious flirting. The one moment that May has a flash of possible attraction happens after she feels dejected after her first date with Adam. She and Polly dance together, and at first it’s awkward, but Polly and May have good chemistry and it ends with May possibly interested (and taking in Polly’s cat, Loopy). When May and Polly are together for the first time, May doesn’t open up to her about Adam at all. She doesn’t react uncomfortably to Polly undressing her. Her only concern is that she is weird. When Polly reassures her that she loves weird, May fully consents and participates in the hookup. May probably never discovered her queerness up until this point because her life has always been caught up in her fantasies, which seem to feature men. May grew up in a regular suburban, nuclear family with a mother obsessed with appearances. She also grew up an outcast and has wanted so desperately to be accepted by her peers. Being queer starkly goes against those influences, and even if she may have had moments of attraction towards women, they were probably either ignored or pushed down. Polly not only made her feel wanted after Adam rejected her, she told May she loved May’s weirdness, letting her know it was okay to be herself, and that also gave May permission to explore whatever queer feelings she had. This is why, when May discovers Polly is also hooking up with a woman named Ambrosia, she feels even more rejected. In May’s mind, she isn’t special or good enough for the person who helped her discover such an important aspect of herself.
As these relationships have been falling apart, Suzie’s case has continued to crack, mirroring May’s lowered self-esteem and negative view of herself. The increased pressure hits a breaking point for both that changes May’s life forever. May had volunteered to work with blind children, something that could have been a healing experience for her, but when she decides to introduce them to Suzie, May refuses to take her out of her case and a horrible accident happens, shattering Suzie’s case and injuring the kids. It ultimately ends with Suzie being torn to pieces. May is horribly traumatized by this. She no longer has her only real friend, and it forces her to go back out into the real world. She meets a punk who has arms she likes, but when he calls her a freak for having Loopy’s corpse in the fridge, May finally snaps, remembering all of the rejection, the humiliation, and the loss she’s encountered recently and kills him. She now believes that she is too weird to find a friend who will see her; she needs to make one herself, and she needs to get more parts. This is the pivotal moment when May’s self-perception has totally shattered. She is no longer the May we once knew. The delusions she has kept within are now coming out, and they will hurt others just like the shards of glass on the floor.
May enacts her plan to gather parts on Halloween night, and she chooses to go as Suzie. This is an inspired choice. Suzie was May’s only real support system for most of her life. Dressing up as Suzie, May has true confidence for the first time in the film. She is calm and calculated. She walks with her back straight and with her head held high. She is finally out of her glass case and out into the world being fully and unabashedly creepy and weird. This is the first time we see her accepting herself, just like Suzie did. May would also take her self-loathing out on Suzie, so her dressing up as her is empowering for her. She is using her weirdness, which she hated herself for, which she has been bullied for, and which has been used against her, as a way to get revenge on the ex-lovers who made her feel unwanted and alone.
Once she has their parts, she builds her new friend, Amy. However, Amy predictably does not reanimate when May is finished making her. May begs Amy not just to live, but to see her. May cannot handle the reality that she is truly alone and lived in the delusion of having a friendship with Suzie for her entire life. What made Suzie alive was May herself, but May really believed that Suzie was her own person. She needed to believe that Suzie was her own person, because Suzie saw May and loved May just as she was when no one else did. Now she’s alone again, and she desperately needs Amy to replace that role. Her providing Amy with her lazy eye, the eye that has caused her so much grief, is a token of hope that Amy will witness and have empathy for all of the suffering May has been through. After being gifted the eye, Amy comes alive and comforts May, but is this truly a happy ending? For May, it is. She gets what she wants. Amy is alive and has accepted her. But in reality, May taking the parts of people who hurt her to build Amy is just her carrying her past trauma around without processing it. Instead of working through it, she will slip into a fantasy world she specifically built around her pain of being rejected to comfort and protect herself, but she will see those parts and the memories and pain will flood back in every time. The ending of the film seems to say that May, now that she has replaced Suzie, is further retreating into delusion instead of processing and accepting the traumatic things that have happened to her and she will most likely never venture back out into the real world again.
May is a film that stays with you for a while after watching. I think many of us can relate to the desire of retreating into fantasy when we’ve been rejected and have struggled with accepting ourselves. The rejection May received from Adam and Polly was painful, but the rejection she received from herself was even harder. Though she had support from Suzie, her self-loathing also manifested into Suzie, meaning her best friend also caused her a great deal of pain. May was struggling with loneliness and needed human contact with others, but when she was by herself after that contact, her self-hatred made the loneliness worse. May needed to be her own friend, not through Suzie or through Amy. She needed to have compassion for the little girl she once was and be her own support. Sadly, this does not happen for May, but maybe it’s a lesson we can take from her. May reminds us that while all any of us want is for someone to see us, it’s at times important for that person to be ourselves.