Review: The Tale
The body remembers, even when the mind intellectualises or romanticises. In The Tale, documentarian Jennifer Fox explores her own history of childhood molestation in an extraordinary piece of cinematic memoir that is as deeply disturbing as it is nuanced.
When we first meet Jenny (Laura Dern, characteristically superb), the 48-year-old documentary filmmaker seems to have everything in order. She lives in an enviable Manhattan loft with her fiancee (Common), teaches non-fiction cinema at a local university, and travels the world to capture and convey other people's stories. The film's basis and narrative impetus derives from an essay written by Jenny when she was in a grade school, an essay chronicling a summer she spent with her riding instructor, Mrs. G (Elizabeth Debicki, superlative in arguably her best role to date), and her running coach Bill (Jason Ritter). For Jenny, it was a wonderful time - "I'd like to begin this story by telling you something so beautiful" is how the essay starts - so she doesn't quite understand why her mother would be so horrified by the essay's content.
Yet her mother and anyone else who reads it is right to be horrified for the essay talks of Jenny's romantic and sexual relationship with the 40-year-old Bill and how Mrs. G helped to enable that relationship. Initially, Jenny doesn't see how her mother could interpret it so inappropriately but, as she delves deeper into her own story, she comes to realise how what she remembered to be a time of empowerment was, in actuality, a period of abuse. In Jenny's mind, she knew she was young when she embarked on her relationship with Bill but it isn't until she sees a picture of herself from that time that it registers that she wasn't a 15-year-old on the verge of adulthood, she was a 13-year-old child. Suddenly, the flashbacks that had been previously shown are now presented again, but this time with a far younger, more vulnerable looking actress (Isabelle Nélisse), an audacious but perfect gambit that thoroughly unsettles both Jenny and the audience.
The Tale, by dint of its subject matter alone, is not an easy watch. Even with the knowledge that a body double was used in the scenes where Jenny and Bill are shown in bed, it's difficult not to be shaken to the core especially when witnessing how powerfully Nélisse expresses Jenny's love, admiration and gratitude for being seen by, mattering to and appreciated by two people who have ultimately taken advantage of her trust. The film itself is an ongoing conversation not only between Jenny and her younger self, but between Jenny and other characters in both their younger and present incarnations. The exploration and understanding of what the truth is, and how contradictory versions of the same memory can co-exist and both be true in their own way, is done with honesty and clarity. The Tale is a wrenching film, not without its faults, but essential viewing not just in the #metoo era, but in any age.
The Tale
Directed by: Jennifer Fox
Written by: Jennifer Fox
Starring: Laura Dern, Ellen Burstyn, Jason Ritter, Elizabeth Debicki, Common, Isabella Amara, Isabelle Nélisse, Jessica Sarah Flaum, John Heard, Frances Conroy
