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The Tale

✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

USA, Germany

•

2018

1h55

Jennifer Fox

–

Director

Laura Dern, Isabelle Nélisse, Elizabeth Debicki, Jason Ritter

–

Stars

Drama

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Genre

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An investigation into one woman’s memory as she‘s forced to re-examine her first sexual relationship and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.

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WHAT ARE CRITICS SAYING?

80

Vox by Alissa Wilkinson

In The Tale, Fox takes an experience that’s far, far too common — and newly visible in American culture — and mines it for its emotional heft, turning it into an interrogation of how those who’ve experienced assault and abuse go on to navigate their lives. It is a story of a woman taking her life back, nested in a film serving the same purpose.
80

Village Voice by Bilge Ebiri

It takes a remarkably assured artist to make all this work, and Fox is savvy about how she eases us into her complicated narrative.
100

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

An immense, brave, and genuinely earth-shaking self-portrait that explores sexual assault with a degree of nuance and humility often missing from the current discourse, The Tale is undeniably primed for the #MeToo movement, but it’s also so much bigger than that.
83

The Playlist by Gregory Ellwood

Fox knows firsthand the events that occur to Dern’s character in her feature narrative debut because they happened to her. And beyond its creative success and failures, her willingness to tell her own story in such graphic detail is a startlingly brave act.
100

The Guardian by Jordan Hoffman

I want more people to see The Tale because it’s such an innovative, honest and important film. It is a landmark, and Laura Dern is absolutely extraordinary. But I know for certain I’ll never watch it again.
91

The Film Stage by Jordan Raup

The Tale is a soul-excavating reckoning with the suppression of trauma and a testament to the courage required for a victim to confront the most damaging moments of their lives.
100

Uproxx by Mike Ryan

This is an excellent, poignant, and amazing film that will stick with you. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s a must-see, even though watching it is a very difficult thing to do.
70

Variety by Peter Debruge

Both a natural extension of Fox’s career to date and a complete about-face, The Tale marks her first narrative feature, but only because traditional documentary wouldn’t do justice to this messy, meandering investigation into her traumatic first sexual experience, for the incidents it depicts are true, “at least as far I know.”

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