The Tale: The Pain of Remembering

The Tale is a movie I dreaded watching but found so compelling that I was really glad I saw it (thought I don't ever watch to re-watch it). So, I'm recommending it, but also with the caveat that it will disturb you and make you want to never let your children out of your sight ever again.

The luminescent Laura Dern plays Jennifer Fox (the writer and filmmaker of this movie; this is a true story about her dawning realization about an incident in her childhood). Things kick off when Jenny gets a call from her mother who has just discovered an old story Jenny wrote when she was 13. Her mother is very upset, but Jenny dismisses her concern, telling her she's making a mountain out of a molehill. What follows is a chilling story that is told in a hazy and erratic way I've never seen before as Jenny tries to piece together her memories. There are flashbacks to the summer when the incident took place, where we get to see how 13-year old Jenny (Isabelle Nelisse) first met the enigmatic Mrs. G (Elizabeth Debicki) and a running coach, Bill (Jason Ritter). And how they slowly gained her trust and eventually subjected her to something that she wouldn't truly understand until the present when she is old enough to realize what exactly happened to her that summer.

This movie is a wondrous piece of storytelling, weaving back and forth through Jenny's diaphanous memories, anchored by her narration that only gives up bits and pieces of this story, making you relive her experience as a young child. You can easily see how this woman has spent her entire lifetime believing that what happened to her was perfectly normal, but watching the cracks appear as she researches this story and interviews people from her past is devastating. She is a journalist who focuses on women's stories and sexual abuse, and to watch her dawning horror that she herself experienced this and isn't just some objective outsider chronicling other's experiences is devastating. Laura Dern and Isabelle Nelisse are a heartbreaking duo as old and young Jenny, and they will be sweeping awards for their performances in the very near future.

In the #MeToo world, stories like The Tale have even more resonance and urgency. Young women are trained to rationalize and justify so much bad behavior - no he's my boyfriend, he's my husband, this is how it is, etc. This movie is an exquisite deconstruction of how that type of thinking is ingrained into us as young girls and perpetuated into adulthood. Even the parents, who suspected what was happening, were so horrified by the taboo that they chose to believe it couldn't be happening rather than consider reality. The takeaway from this movie shouldn't be to lock up your daughters. But it should certainly be to talk to them openly about sexuality and what they deserve. Rather than masking the topic in an aura of uncertainty, which then leads to women keeping secrets and letting themselves live with shame rather than speaking out against the truly shameful people they encounter.