Ahead of its premiere next month, HBO has released a new trailer for writer-director Jennifer Fox’s upcoming drama The Tale. The film is based on Fox’s true story and stars Laura Dern in the lead role as the filmmaker alongside Jason Ritter, Ellen Burstyn, Common, Frances Conroy, John Heard, Elizabeth Debicki, and Isabel Nélisse; watch it here…
“Can our memories mislead us? Does the mind unconsciously reframe the truth to make it palatable? Jennifer Fox (Laura Dern) faces a host of life-altering questions after a short story from her middle school days forces her to re-examine her first sexual relationship and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.
An accomplished documentarian working in New York, Jennifer is completing her latest project, about the lives of women around the world. She receives a series of phone calls from her mother, Nettie (Ellen Burstyn), who has found a short story Jennifer wrote at the age of 13. In it, she describes various encounters with her riding instructor Mrs. G (Elizabeth Debicki) and her running coach Bill (Jason Ritter) while away at summer camp. Nettie is unnerved by the implications of her daughter’s writing, but Jennifer is nonplussed. She has always looked back with fondness on the time she spent with the two charismatic adults.
Egged on by Nettie and yearning to know more, Jennifer sets out on a journey to find the real people 30 years later, starting with the children, now adults, who also attended the camp back then—and eventually the coaches themselves. But the more she learns, the more her memories shift and the more questions she unearths. As her frustration mounts, she finds herself turning inward to get to the truth, imagining conversations with her 13-year-old-self (Isabel Nélisse) and even Mrs. G and Bill in an effort to understand how and why events occurred so long ago.”
The Tale will premiere May 26th on HBO.
Photo Credits: HBO