Rated: 18A
Starring: “her father should be proud” Laura Dern, “his father would be proud” Jason Ritter and Ellen Burstyn
Plot: A woman is forced to revisit her faulty memory regarding her first sexual experience more than 30 years after the fact.
Tanya’s Verdict: I was blown away by this movie. It’s based on a true story and is written and directed by Jennifer Fox – the woman portrayed in the film by the amazing Laura Dern. The way the movie is filmed is hauntingly raw – at times like a documentary (Jennifer Fox is a documentarian) and flitting back and forth between past and present. It all starts with a story – written by Fox as a young girl about a relationship between a young teenager and her 40-year-old running coach – taken to be fiction by her teacher. Her mother (Burstyn) finds the story (more than 30 years after the fact) and knows it to be true. At this point, Fox is forced to confront the fact that her memory has failed her with its inaccuracy but saved her by editing and thus allowing her to move on from the past.
Dern’s performance is unbelievable – there is a scene where she is teaching a university class and she asks a young female student to describe her first sexual experience. As this woman details the awkward innocence of it, Dern’s face embodies the mournful anguish she feels at the fact that her own loss of innocence was one of calculation and deceit – something she is only now beginning to understand and deal with.
Young Jennifer Fox is portrayed by Windsor, Ontario’s own Isabelle Nélisse – she is perfectly cast as the irreproachable and trusting teen struggling to make a meaningful adult connection outside of her loving yet chaotic home.
The Tale – cinematic storytelling at its finest!