User reviews

Jennifer Fox (Laura Dern) is a globe-trotting documentarian. She's engaged to Martin (Common) for the past 3 years and they're both often away for work. She teaches documentary filmmaking at a college. Her mother (Ellen Burstyn) is desperate to contact her after finding her old writing assignment. The memories of a childhood relationship resurface. She slowly investigates the scattered pieces of recollections. During the 70's, Jenny (Isabelle Nélisse) was a shy girl at 13. Her parents were fighting and she felt invisible. She worshipped her horse riding coach Mrs. G (Elizabeth Debicki). Mrs. G and running coach Bill Allens (Jason Ritter) were having an affair. They pulled Jenny into their secret relationship of which Bill took advantage.

This HBO film tells a devastating tale. Laura Dern's performance is a nice growth from denial to realization. It's all on her face like when her student recounts her first sexual experience. Other standouts include Nélisse as the young Jenny and Jason Ritter. Nélisse is perfectly innocent and Ritter uses his personable charms to deviate from the normal creep trope. It's quite horrific. Obviously, this is a personal movie for filmmaker Jennifer Fox. It would have added to the reality of the movie if young Jenny read the assignment writing at the beginning of the movie. Better yet if young Jenny read Jennifer Fox's actual letter. It would be that much more poignant. Overall, this is devastating personal tale with a great performance.

Greetings from Lithuania.

"The Tale" (2018) had an amazing acting by both leads - Laura Dern and the girl who played as a young her and as well as superb directing. Script was good, but considering that it is a real story and the one who wrote the script and directed this movie is the one the movie about (!) - this gives a different wight for the whole picture. And given the hard subject, this movie handled it very well and intriguingly.

Overall, i really enjoyed "The Tale" not because of its hard subject, but because of how well it was told. This is a really good movie in all directions.

I've been meaning to watch this movie for quite a while. I've watched the trailer and read the sinopses. Watching it I wished I went into it without knowing what it was about just because I feel it would be even a more compelling experience. This movie will make you feel uncomfortable, disgusted, heartbroken, dizzy... And that's why I believe it is such a good one. There will be moments in which you'll find yourself looking away. It's an horrible story seen through the eyes of a woman who is forced to face the truth about something in her past that she managed to hide from herself, as a defense mechanism. It really makes you wonder how many times you and the people around you sugarcoat things, because the reality is just to awful to accept. Both the leading actresses were amazing, the adult Jenny, shocked, in denial, angry, heartbroken and 13 year old Jenny, confused, broken, innocent, trying to cope with something no child should have to. It's shocking and brutal. It will leave you feeling sick to your stomach, and it will be completely worth the watch.

This film tells the story of a woman who realises what happened to her when she was a teenager.

It is a story that has a lot of impact on the viewer because of the disturbing subject matter. The story is engaging, and the portrayal of the grooming process is very detailed. It is a sad story, but it is a story that needs to be told, so that people will be vigilant if it happens again.

The Tale is a drama film directed by Jennifer Fox. The film stars Laura Dern, Ellen Burstyn, Jason Ritter, Elizabeth Debicki, Isabelle Nélisse, Common and Frances Conroy.

While filming a documentary on child victims of rape, the documentary maker finds herself re-evaluating her childhood relationships with her riding instructor and her running coach.

The tale is undoubtedly one of the brave and brilliant film to make and it requires a lot's of courage to touch such a disturbing and sensitive subject and the director deserves a kudos for this film as she had highlighted a very sensitive and important matter that too without making the film controversial and handled the film remarkably well.

For a film to get successful the most important aspect is it's cast and the cast in this film is superbly marvelous and deserves an applause. I have read most of the viewers appreciating Laura Dern for her impeccable powerful performance but Elizabeth Debicki and Isabelle Nélisse deserves an equal appreciation for their superb performance.

Screenplay of the film is decent but gets slow in between primarily due to the subject of the film. Climax of the film is good and gives a decent closure to the film. A must watch film.

This is one of the most honest, disturbing yet beautiful explorations of a subject that is all too often over-simplified or dealt with extremely heavy-handily.

The way that the abuse is discussed within the characters frozen in time in the main character's psyche, is profound and unflinchingly honest. The discussions in real-life between mother and daughter - painfully real.

I will be thinking about this film for some time to come, it is an invitation to look much more closely at the stories we tell ourselves, especially with regards to "love".

When reviewing a film like "The Tale", I want to be careful in quantifying some of my statements. In an era in which women are much more empowered to tell their stories of abuse (sexual or otherwise) and confront their tormentors, movies like this are important to be made/seen. Even more unique/impressive is the fact that director & writer Jennifer Fox is actually telling her own story in this case. As such, despite the fact that I didn't find "The Tale" to perhaps be as gripping as I thought it could/should, I would never say it isn't important or made from a well-meaning place.

For a basic plot summary, "The Tale" tells the story of Jennifer (Laura Dern), a videographer who out-of-the-blue is drawn back into her past where as a 13-year old (played by Isabelle Nelisse) she was sexually coerced/assaulted by her track and field coach Bill (Jason Ritter). All the while, her equestrian mentor Mrs. G (Elizabeth Debicki) sat back and let it happen, while mother Nettie (Laura Allen & Ellen Burstyn) never quite put all the pieces together until it was far too late. Now an adult, Jennifer must deal with those events in order to feel authentic in front of her classes of students.

In terms of overall material and the emotion it contains, this is an excellent and heartbreaking film. It pulls absolutely no punches and really feels authentic (the costumes/sets of the 70s add realism). In short, the production value here is wonderful, as befitting a film with HBO backing.

My main problem with "The Tale", however, is that I felt the narrative tricks it used to tell the story were at best confusing and at worse distracting from the overall emotion of the piece. There are times where grown-up Jennifer will converse with young-Jennie, as well as other cross-time interactions that obviously aren't actually happening but are portrayed as Jennifer's inter-ruminations. Instead of deepening the emotion for me, what this ended up doing was confusing what the overall take-home message of the film was supposed to be. I really struggled to get much past "it was a horrible/wrong thing to have happen" even though I know Fox is hinting at more deeper themes.

One standout of the whole thing, though, is Dern absolutely acting her heart out in every scene she is in. None of my narrative confusion can be pinned on the acting in this one, as I found it to be really solid and, in Dern's case, spectacular. It's amazing to think that she has been working almost nonstop since Jurassic Park!

So, overall I put "The Tale" at 6/10 stars, with the caveat that I think the importance of what is being conveyed throughout the film likely transcends how objectively "good" it actually ends up being.

I've never written a review in my life, but anyone who has been touched by child sexual abuse get ready to feel bombarded. The shame, the confusion, the guilt, even the secret feelings of being "special"....they're all in there. This film was both hard to watch and hard to look away from. The acting is superb and the flow of dialogue realistic. A cautionary tale for anyone with children.

The first question I had after viewing this film; how could she forget these events from 1973? Then I realize, this is the entire point of the film, that children faced with traumatic events can misremember events as a means for survival. The film excels at demonstrating this. That said, I have some issues with the current portions of the film, and some of the casting.

I'll come right out and say it, Laura Dern looks absolutely nothing like the 13 year-old Jenny. I'm old enough to remember Laura Dern in films in the early 80s. Dern is tall with a somewhat long, angular face, where as Isabella Nelisse is quite short and small even for a 13-year old. She has a round face with huge doe-like eyes. Frankly their energy as actors is just very different to me. Some may consider this petty, but its an issue for me. Maggie Gyllenhaal would have been a better casting choice.

I don't really understand casting Common as her modern Jenny's partner. He's considerably younger than Dern. It just doesn't ring true with me.

Finally, I'm having a hard time with the timing of events here. So Jennifer Fox was born in 1959, this means she would have been 48 in 2007. Yet, everything looks contemporary, i.e., the student's clothing style, the presence of modern smart phones.

Ultimately, the flash back portions of The Tale are what carry the film, the modern day portions could have been much more efective, both in casting and in script writing. The film gives us the notion that everything was screwed up in the 1970s, and in 2018, we are in some sort of politically correct age of enlightenment. I can't agree with this. Contemporary Hollywood is obsessed with political correctness, and it shows here.

This movie is absolutely perfect. It's raw, real, and shows how sexual abuse can affect the subconscious for a lifetime. As someone who was sexually abused at a young age, I recommend this movie to anyone who has gone through something similar. You won't regret it.

The acting is superb, the writing and style of film works great for the theme.

POWERFUL, MOVING, BREATHTAKINGLY PAINFUL.. This is one movie I will never forget.

A distressing, disquieting & devastating self-portrait that's right up there with some of the most upsetting films ever made, The Tale is an unflinchingly raw, immensely brave & powerfully affecting account of the director's own past that's brought to life with deft touch & unapologetic honesty, and features an unforgettable performance from Laura Dern.

Film is more cruel than real art and reality is more cruel than film

While I was watching this highly effective movie, there was a moment, the moment I have remembered some memory that I burried to the deep side of my mind. It was the time I have realised I was abused when I was child. I think it can show that the power of that amazing movie. Finally, I have faced what I live. And the idea of being your own documentarian, it was one of the best way to show how to examine of our memories or what we tell about them to ourselves to feel better. I will never forget that moment and I will never forget this remarkable movie.

The plot is very messy and incoherent. This is the only issue I have with The Tale, but it's definitely a grave one. I won't be lying if I said that sometimes I couldn't even tell what was Jennifer, our protagonist, wanted to know, or what she was trying to discover. All I wanted is a specific aim, and that shouldn't have been hard to achieve.

But there are so many things that can redeem this film. All the performances are great; Elizabeth Debicki is wonderful as Jennifer's riding teacher, and I didn't even realize that she has these masterful acting abilties. Laura Dern is very good as Jennifer, but I think Isabelle Nélisse who played the same character at the age of 13 is the real star in this movie. She excellently balanced between the innocence and the cruelty; as the movie mixed between the past and the present.

By the way, this is one of the most important things that made this movie so intense. Jennifer Fox, as a director, used the technique of mixing the past with the present to create some sort of an unsettling atmosphere that made this movie so difficult to watch. Also, there is a particular scene in which this technique was used, that I consider as the best scene of the movie, and one of the best movie scenes this year so far.

Another great decision the director made is retelling Jennifer's story every time she discovers something new about her past. That made me that every new piece of information is like a clever twist.

There are plenty of moments that will make you feel nervous. Moments that will put you into Jennifer's shoes, and make you keep wondering what this character will do to her? what this character's answer will be like? Is this is even the truth?

As you can see there are many great things in terms of the directing, and that means that Jennifer Fox's directorial debut is very successful. But it's her writing abilities that need to be developed.

(7/10)

This is a masterpiece. Jennifer Fox is a genius. Writing and directing? Amazing. And, apparently, she actually wrote the story at age 13 that this movie is based on. Wow. The directing is so subtle, the mixture of past and present, the interaction of the characters, the woman and her mother. Stellar performances by all.

P.S. The subject matter, sexual abuse of a minor, is not everyone's cup of tea. If you're offended by it, or don't think it's important enough to have its own movie, don't watch "The Tale." I wasn't familiar with it until I became a therapist, but now I know it occurs and is a devastating and life-altering experience. This movie handles it fantastically. But if you don't want to see a film about it, don't watch this movie.

Jennifer Fox, you are brilliant. Please keep going. Have you got another one of these for us?

Although this is a true story and I'm not here to take anything away from this woman because she was a victim, this story makes me uncomfortable. There is a strong undertone of the common misbelief that young girls like and want adult sexual attention. That is not something we as a society should perpetuate. I still applaud this woman for being brave enough to say something even if I didn't particularly like the movie.

Very repetitive and messy plot. some sentences are repeated over and over. very slow pace and there isn't anything really surprising or that makes you think "wow! what a story, or what a great film", too many cliches and things heard and seen HUNDREDS of times. If you read the synopsis, you already know pretty much everything.