Harrowing story is one for our times
WHEN filmmaker Jennifer Fox was 13, she wrote a story for English class about a young girl who is coerced into a sexual relationship with her 40yearold running coach.
Little did her teacher know, the story was true.
‘‘I got an A,’’ says Fox, now 58. ‘‘My teacher wrote on the back, ‘If this is true, it’s a travesty. But since you’re so welladjusted, it can’t be.’ ’’
Four decades later, Fox has adapted her account into a harrowing feature film, The Tale, which premieres on SoHo Monday. Twotime Oscar nominee Laura Dern plays an adult Jennifer — a successful documentarian and professor — as she confronts the truth that her childhood ‘‘romance’’ with Bill (Jason Ritter) was sexual abuse. With the support of her mother (Ellen Burstyn) and boyfriend (Common), she reconnects with people from her past in an effort to remember what happened after years of suppression.
‘‘The film is about memory and the stories we tell ourselves to survive,’’ says Dern (51), who was shown the script by director Brian De Palma, Fox’s friend and mentor. ‘‘I think we all find that relatable, not just people who have experienced sexual abuse or assault.’’
Dern identifies with Fox’s story, having grown up as a teen actress on movie sets where she experienced sexual harassment. She says she never recognised it for what it was until the Me Too movement started, as women and men came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct and abuses of power.
‘‘I didn’t realise until recently that my experiences of harassment were harassment,’’ Dern says. ‘‘For so many young girls and boys, behaviour is justified because it’s like, ‘Well, they did that. Maybe that’s normal.’ We presume that’s just the way it works in Hollywood.’’ Like her fictionalised character in
The Tale, Fox did not fully process her trauma until middle age, as she interviewed women around the world for her 2006 documentary
Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman and began to hear similar stories. She’s careful to make the distinction between sexual assault and abuse, when someone is manipulated into thinking ‘‘he or she is agreeing to something which is sexual, but it isn’t often violent’’, Fox says. ‘‘It’s different from rape.’’
The movie earned rave reviews (100% positive on Rotten Tomatoes)