On Saturday morning, Jane Fonda, Gloria Allred and Tessa Thompson resulted evangelizing screams in the name of women’s rights during Sundance’s snow-drenched Respect Rally. About an hour subsequently, “The Tale, ” a provocative Laura Dern movie about sexual power dynamics, premiered to a standing ovation. Three periods into the festival, it’s by far the standout jewel — an absorbing, articulated capsule that accentuates the dynamics unfolding in the working day of #MeToo.
Much will be said about the timeliness of “The Tale, ” a dramatization of writer-director Jennifer Fox’s adolescent affair with two adult athletic coaches who an ostensible paradise away from her dispiriting home life. Just as much should be said of its workmanship. Fox mines her background as a documentarian( she helmed the acclaimed “Beirut: The Last Home Movie” and “An American Love Story, ” among others) to forge a framing machine that treats remembrances — those relics we comprise so dear — as unreliable sources. Employed to depict decades-old sexual assault, the tactic interrogates the ways a survivor can persuade herself that what she experienced was something she invited, or at the least something she accepted as an authentic emotional buttress.
Dern portrays Fox, better known as Jenny, a globetrotting correspondent who’s comfy camouflaging herself in unfamiliar environs to capture lives not often extol. Her saga begins in earnest when her mom, played by Ellen Burstyn, discovers a short story Jenny wrote at 13. “I’d like to begin this story by telling you something so beautiful, ” it reads. But what follows, in hindsight, is anything but.
Jenny’s tale recounts what began as exuberant self-discovery: She found a haven in a horseback riding teacher named Mrs. G( Elizabeth Debicki) and a celebrated running coach named Bill( Jason Ritter ). Together, Mrs. G and Bill mentored adolescents in the verdant Virginia countryside. But they supervised far more than Jenny’s outdoor recreation; they attained her their lover, taking her virginity and cajoling her with youthful sweet nothings.
“I want to save you from all those stupid young boys out there, ” Bill coos as Jenny’s wide, callow eyes stare back at him, at long last finding “members attention” her aloof parents denied her.
“The Tale” is a memoir in big-screen format, one that’s likely to spark debates about both its content and its stylistic selections. For my money, it’s stunning. The behaviors Jenny, at 48, glamorize her impressions of Bill and Mrs. G — she’s ever thought of him as her first boyfriend — are revealed in shards, past and present, melding to demonstrate her warped memories. At health risks of hyperbole, I’ve never seen a movie like this. Fox pushes the limitations of narrative cinema, presenting Jenny’s undercooked recollections as reality and then correcting them with delicate, psychologically deft subtlety. The adult Jenny and the 13 -year-old Jenny( played by Isabelle Nelisse) sometimes violate the fourth wall, addressing one another to exchange belying recollections. Was Bill raping Jenny?
She doesn’t think so, until she investigates further, tracking down her age-old mentors to better understand what she went through. Scenes glide from one to the next, with Jenny’s short story — recited in fragmented voice-over by Dern — anchoring Fox’s exploration. A filmmaker introducing so many meta vanities is a gamble, and here it pays off in spades.
But one line in Jenny’s short story is the most searing of all, crystallizing the power of #MeToo, which seeks to correct what was commonplace in the ’7 0s: “I is my finding that I trust him so much I never understand where he’s leading me. Once we’re that far, I never know how to say no.”
Some may protest the depiction of Bill fornicating with young Jenny, but the film is never exploitative about its presentation. It’s shot mostly in closeup so that they are able to telegraph emotions instead of sensuality. A title card at the end reveals that an adult body doubled stand in for Nelisse during sexuality scenes with Ritter, and at the Q& A onstage after the premiere, Fox said she used verbal cues so Nelisse, 11 at the time of the hit, wouldn’t need to feign copulation during her closeups.( “Pretend you’re being stung by a bee, ” for example .) To wit, these scenes — difficult to watch but vital — underscore Fox’s wish to define the lane the administrator “constructed a story to survive.”
Jenny is no Lolita.
Throughout the movie, the adult Jenny, attempting to justify her past, says, “But that was the ’7 0s. ” Nobody “was talkin about a” sex crime or power conflicts with the import that today’s dialogue assumes. But one line in Jenny’s short story is more scorch of all, crystallizing the power of #MeToo, which seeks to correct what was commonplace in the ’7 0s: “I is my finding that I trust him so much I never understand where he’s contributing me. Once we’re that far, I never know how to say no.”
Bill’s is textbook cult behaviour, but Jenny’s naivety and appetite for affection cloud her decision. We see that unfurl with a sophistication that stretches beyond a hashtag or a headline-friendly social movement. This is one woman’s personal history, divorced from the trappings of any culture talking degrees.( Unavoidably, prepare for a storm of think-pieces .)
Fox said at the Q& A that Dern signed on for “The Tale” a year and a half before the movie was financed — a proactive move that signals her dedication to the tale. It paid off. The film is cathartic and angry, but never preachy. It’s the work of an artist who has expended her life seeking the truth and draw lessons from the past. It’s a meditation worthy of the highest kudo. Most signficantly, it’s a salve.
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