The Tale (Jennifer Fox)

[Grouchy]

[Grouchy]

I expected this to be an excellent film based on comments online. It wasn't, but it was good enough. Laura Dern plays her part to perfection and the tone carries the sordid story throughout the feature as it makes "the tale" something of a mystery that needs to be unravelled. It was a bit ridiculous how Jenny didn't finish her letter all the way through but kept interrupting it as it suited the plot, though. This does feature the boldest statutory rape scenes I've ever seen. I wonder if that and the fact that the story is autobiographical (something I didn't know until the ending) made it critic proof, resulting in the exaggerated praise I read.

[Peng]

Count me in the exaggerated praise. This is so tremendously clear-eyed that I'm thrown off at first by the mostly analytical approach to the director's own past, but it may be apt for telling about the uncertainty of recollections this horrific. Appropriately, the cathartic moments are not about events -- nothing narratively tidy when it's very personal here -- but about emotions of reconciling between the protective layers of past and present selves, which resurface in tiny bursts throughout when confronted by outside views (Laura Dern's barely controlled facade of conflicting emotions, when listening to her student's experience, is something to behold). And it reaches a fearsome confrontation near the end; Dern's last scene, of finally reaching a painful next step, will stick in my mind for a long time. 8.5/10