The tale
(DVD)

Based on The tale written by Jenny Fox, age 13.

Originally broadcast in 2018.

Aspect ration 16:9 (1.78:1).

Directors of photography, Denis Lenois, Ivan Strasburg ; editors, Alex Hall, Gary Levy, Anne Fabini ; music, Ariel Marx.

Laura Dern, Isabele Nélisse, Elizabeth Debicki, Jason Ritter, Frances Conroy, John Heard, Jodi Long, Common, Ellen Burstyn.

A documentary filmmaker starts to question the nature of her childhood relationship with her riding instructor and running coach after rediscovering a story she wrote at age 13.

A groundbreaking film memoir, based on the filmmaker's own personal experiences, this HBO Films presentation tells the story of Jennifer Fox (Laura Dern), a globetrotting documentarian and professor living an apparently enviable life with her boyfriend (Common) in NYC. That world is turned upside down when her mother (Ellen Burstyn) discovers a story Jennifer wrote at 13 depicting a "special" relationship she had with two adult coaches, Mrs. G (Elizabeth Debicki) and Bill (Jason Ritter), in a North Carolina horse camp. Reading the pages of "The Tale," Jennifer realizes the coded details she composed 40 years ago are quite unlike her recollection. Deeply shaken yet determined to square her version of events with the truth, she sets out to question her two coaches and other girls who attended the camp. As Jennifer's seventh-grade self-reawakens, the loving stories she told herself for decades begin to unravel. Seamlessly toggling between past and present, writer/director Jennifer Fox forges a fresh and uncompromising cinematic language to penetrate the heightened internal worlds of her character at two pivotal stages. Shocking, emotionally raw and destabilizing, The Tale punctures the insidious workings of unchecked power and lays bare the mechanisms of memory - refashioned over time by a growing girl in order to not only survive, but to prevail. -- Amazon

Rating: TVMA.

DVD, wide screen (1.78:1, 16:9); Dolby digital 5.1.