The Tale

A film about a woman rereading her own memory. Jennifer is a documentary director and teaches at a university. Her mother sends her an old piece of paper. It is a school assignment her daughter wrote at thirteen. A relationship is described in it and the child has written it as something beautiful. Jennifer remembers. In her own account she was at a riding camp that summer, two adults took an interest in her, and she experienced it as a choice. Then she looks at the photographs. She sees herself far smaller than she remembered. From there the film turns into an investigation. She finds old addresses, calls people from the camp, talks to women from that time, and the story she has been telling changes step by step. The film carries this into its form. Scenes from the past are shot one way when first shown and reshot differently as information arrives; sometimes the present-day Jennifer enters a past scene and speaks to the characters. What the narrative is interested in is not the event but the account: the film shows how the story a child told herself was built and how it was preserved for thirty years. The two adults are not drawn as monsters. The narrative shows them as attractive, attentive and gentle, and that is what is most disturbing. The production used a particular method to protect the child actor. An adult double was used in the difficult scenes and those were filmed separately. The source is the director's own life. The account is autobiographical and the character carries her name. Laura Dern, Isabelle Nélisse, Elizabeth Debicki, Jason Ritter and Ellen Burstyn are in the cast. Jennifer Fox wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes formally bold films built on memory and trauma. Who it is not for: anyone who wants to stay away from the subject; the film deals directly with child abuse and some scenes are plainly hard.