Exploring the grey areas of sexual abuse
The Tale depicts the haziness of memory cinematically: in one flashback, it’s snowing; in a different flashback to the same scene, it’s autumn
Did everyone catch last week’s controversy around the New York Times interview in which male cast members of Arrested Development shushed costar Jessica Walter for speaking out about how her screen husband Jeffrey Tambor verbally abused her on set?
Most of the men quickly apologized, but it was instructive.
Every one of those men, I’m sure, considers himself “a good guy.” I’d bet that they’d condemn accused serial assaulter Harvey Weinstein, who turned himself in to police last week. But suggest to them that they have ingrained assumptions and prejudices that marginalize women, which are more subtle but still potent, and they’re shocked, shocked.
It’s as if each individual man sees how other men are sexist, but can’t see it in himself until it’s explicitly pointed out to him.
To wit, Morgan Freeman, who also last week was accused of harassment and issued the kind of “if I made women uncomfortable then I’m sorry” apology that I find infuriating.
So this is a great moment for the arrival of HBO’s new telefilm The Tale. It’s based on true events that happened to its writer/director, Jennifer Fox. When she was 13, she spent the summer of 1973 at a riding camp run by the glamorous Mrs. G (Elizabeth Debicki). Mrs. Gand her lover/neighbour, Bill (Jason Ritter), groomed and then sexually abused Fox.
But the tale Fox told herself well into adulthood was that the affair was consensual; that she was the hero of her story, not the victim.
Not until she discovered a story about that summer written by her 13-year-old self did she put the pieces together.
(Laura Dern plays adult Jenny; Canada’s Isabelle Nélisse plays her at 13.)
The Tale depicts the haziness of mem- ory cinematically: in one flashback, it’s snowing; in a different flashback to the same scene, it’s autumn. The most striking of these reversals occurs near the beginning: Jenny sees herself in a flashback looking almost sexually mature. Then her mother (Ellen Burstyn) says, “No, that was you at 15. This is you at 13.”
The difference makes you gasp. It’s only two years, but it’s a crucial two years.
The film also spends 50 full minutes showing us how grooming works: how a 13-year-old can be made to feel that she’s consenting to something to which she can’t possibly consent.
Bill and Mrs. G alternately challenge and then praise Jenny. They let her know that, though she feels invisible, they see her. They tell her she’s brave, smart, sensitive, that she’s special and deep — everything she longs to hear and to believe about herself.
Soon, she’s spending the night at Bill’s and he’s telling her, “I want to save you from all the stupid young boys out there.” (Adult body doubles were used in the sex scenes.)
As adult Jenny recovers memories, and interviews other women who were there, we see the dawning realization of her participation in the lie; we see her struggle to readjust her sense of self to accommodate the new truth.
It’s difficult and sad and not always clear, but that’s Fox’s point. Yes, issues of abuse can be fuzzy. Yes, admitting that can complicate things.
But instead of running away from or denying the grey areas, Fox illuminates them.