Jennifer Fox, a long term acclaimed documentary filmmaker turned professor, has fashioned this fascinating but often lugubrious "tale" of child sex abuse, based on her own experiences-more succinctly on an essay she wrote as a 13 year old as part of a school assignment.
The inciting incident takes place when Jennifer (Laura Dern) as an adult receives a frantic phone call from her mother, Nadine (Ellen Burstyn), indicating that she's discovered the school essay hidden away in a box, revealing that Jennifer lost her virginity with a track coach, thirty years her senior, years ago in the early 70s.
The discovery of the essay (entitled "The Tale") leads Jennifer on a journey of self-discovery. Fox toggles back and forth between the past and present, chronicling the circumstances that led her to be taken advantage of by a pedophile. This occurred one summer when Jennifer attended a horse training camp run by the mysterious Mrs. G (Elizabeth Debicki), a Brit who conscripts track coach Bill Allens (Jason Ritter) to coach Jennifer and two other young girls, while they also take horse riding lessons with the ubiquitous Mrs. G.
Jennifer's memories of the impactful summer are clouded by time and a persistent sense of denial. She imagines herself to be much more mature looking than she actually was-an older teenager is used at first in the first flashback sequence. Only after Jennifer's mother shows her a picture in a scrapbook does Jennifer realize that indeed she was a pre-pubescent when she was "deflowered" by the manipulative (and ultimately sinister) Allens. The younger "Jenny" is played adroitly by Isabelle Nélisse.
Jenny's seduction proceeds slowly with the filmmaker dropping clues that something sinister will soon transpire. We learn that Mrs. G. and Allens are amoral "swingers" and confessed to Jenny that they were lovers (despite the fact that Mrs. G lives with her husband at the camp). Eventually Allens arranges to be with Jenny alone and has sexual intercourse with her on more than one occasion (an adult is used as a body double during the sex scenes with the young actor Nélisse).
Despite much lugubrious exposition, Fox's tale proves fascinating. Indeed her refusal to see herself as a victim is admirable. On the other hand, she eventually realizes that when she tells her mother that the "relationship" with Allens was "complicated," it's nothing more than a rationalization and denial of her true feelings about what was done to her as a child.
Fox also proves to be charitable as she doesn't hold a grudge against Mrs. G, whom she meets in the present, and realizes was probably a victim of abuse too, when younger. (Jennifer's glorious memories of Mrs. G are shattered as she now appears to be decrepit-no longer projecting an image of confidence at all.)
More revelations are in store after Jennifer looks up two long lost girls from the camp, both of whom provide additional information shedding light on what went down at the camp years before (Jennifer discovers that a "foursome" was planned by Mrs. G with Allens, this other (slightly older) girl along with Jenny. But because Jenny finally decided to leave both Allens and Mrs. G, this never transpired.
Fantasy dialogues between the older Jennifer and her younger self as well as some of the other younger principals (Mrs. G and Allens) are also effectively utilized to explore Jennifer's inner dialogue.
The climax of the film, wherein Jennifer confronts the now elderly Allens at an awards ceremony, didn't actually happen in real-life. Although Fox revealed at a recent Q&A that she did actually meet him at a coffee shop and used some of their confrontational dialogue in the script.
While Fox insists that Dern really was the best actor to play her, I would have to disagree with that assessment. The real-life documentarian clearly comes from a Jewish milieu-and her Jewishness is alluded to on a number of occasions during the film. Dern clearly isn't Jewish and one feels she's merely playing herself, rather than approximating someone of a different religious/cultural background. Dern's performance is serviceable but due to the casting choice, verisimilitude is lost to a certain extent. Ellen Burstyn is a little better as the critical mom, but a Jewish actor would have been more convincing. The other solution would have been for Fox to drop all allusions to the family's Jewish heritage.
Much more successful are Debicki and Ritter as the young Mrs. G and Allens, who manage to convey the aforementioned "sinister" amorality. Common as Martin, Jennifer's fiancé, offers up a solid performance as her supportive lover. He has one good scene with Dern when a fight develops over Jennifer's refusal to accept the fact that she may have experienced psychological or emotional damage as a result of the coach's abusive behavior.
If you're willing to be patient during all the expository scenes and perhaps forgive a few of the casting choices (we must acknowledge that without Dern's star presence, the film probably would not have been made), The Tale proves to be an absorbing examination of a very current and relevant social issue as well as a meditation on memory. Jennifer Fox's screenplay represents her own personal catharsis, as she finally gets in touch with her true feelings at film's end, and is able to express them.
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