Ellen Burstyn and Laura Dern have signed on to star as a mother and daughter in Jennifer Fox’s “The Tale.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, “The Tale” centers on Jennifer (Dern), “a successful, globetrotting journalist whose mother (Burstyn) finds a story she wrote at age 13 describing a sexual triangle with two adult coaches. Jennifer sets out to find the coaches, now 40 years later, but as she delves deeper into her own mystery, the voice of her 13-year-old ‘Jenny’ (played by Isabelle Nelisse) begins to surface and tell her side of the story. What Jenny reveals shatters everything Jennifer thought she knew about herself.”
Written by Fox, the story was based on her own life experiences that unfolded over the course of many decades.
“It’s hard to believe that, at 13, I handed in to my sixth grade teacher a ‘fictional’ story about the sexual relationship I had with two adored sports coaches,” Fox told THR. “Now, more than 40 years later, that story has become the basis of a true investigative thriller into one woman’s memory, which could only be brought to the screen by the courageous acting powerhouse Laura Dern. It’s completely chilling to sit in the edit room and watch the enactment of an event that as a teenager I thought was love, but which changed the course of my entire identity.”
Fox won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for best documentary for “Beirut: The Last Home Movie.” She also directed and produced “An American Love Story” for PBS, “Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman,” and the Emmy-nominated “My Reincarnation.”
Elizabeth Debicki (“The Night Manager”), Common (“Barbershop: The Next Cut”), and Jason Ritter (“Parenthood,” “Girls”) also star in the film. Gamechanger Films, which exclusively finances narrative features directed by women, is backing the film. It is being presented to foreign buyers at the Cannes Film Festival, which is now running.
