The Tale (2018)

The Tale
Written and directed by Jennifer Fox

This is a complex, well krafted and very effective autobiography movie of a young girl, age 13, who is raped and pulled into an ongoing exploitative association by a male running coach age 40.
Personally, the movie was not an easy entertainment at all.
It is like being inside someone else's nightmare dream, which also parallels one's own.

So much of the movie and these actual situations is reconstructing memory, verifying memory, and discarding memories that have been softened and made more manageable, less horrible. The abuse can be seen as one’s conscious act of righteous rebellion which is natural in a child who can see the flaws in their parent’s troubled relationship and imperfect lives. The child can be alienated by that and seek light and hope by looking up to and following a handy and charismatic, in a child’s eyes, mentor. These memories are dealt with, placated, and reconfigured as a matter of choice by the victim when the reality is far from that. This is well represented in The Tale.

The Jennifer character now, at age 48, is played by Laura Dern. Jenny at age 13 is played by Isabella Nélisse. There is a brilliant and very effective moment involving memory and the casting of the young girl. When Jennifer starts to remember, and we see her past depicted, Jenny is older, played by a 15 year old. But then in a scene looking at old photographs with her mother she is shocked and has to reset the age and the extremity of her innocence at the time of the abusive calamity when she sees a photo of how she really looked when this occurred, at age 13.. From then on young memory Jenny is played by a much younger girl who’s childlike look and contenance of innocence and inexperience cannot be denied.
(This moment really sold the movie to me personally because there is something that went on with me during childhood that I am unable to place without question on the blurry timeline of childhood. Was I 10? Younger? Older? I have reconstructed the age of the boy at 5 years older. Does that make the ratio 10 to 15, 9 to 14, 12 to 17? None of these ratios look good for him and his buddies, but I would like to know what it is for sure.)

The movie deals with this sensitive subject quite explicitly. There is no question of the totality of the phsyical rape. Yet there is not a hint of erotism or gray area in the sexual scenes reenacted. There is text at the end that states that an adult body double is used for these horrible scenes that would not be proper to put a child actor through for the sake of a movie. I wish I could say that for some other films that involve children crisis sexually or otherwise. 

The viewer might want a “trigger” warning for this one. And although a difficult ride, it is so well done and carefully thought through that one can also come out of it with personal insight to the ongoing damage that such an experience causes throughout life even into old age. Is that the reason for one's addictive behavior, lack of a wholesome fulfillment in social life, or spoty career? The reason one hid out wishing not to be noticed?