The Tale: Why Jennifer Fox brought sex abuse story to screens amid Me Too – 'I SURVIVED’

Jennifer Fox does not embody victimhood.

“My hypothesis is: when you’re older your ego is stronger, your sense of self is stronger, so you can accept the idea “maybe I was a victim” and the word victim is, for me, the most intolerable word of all because it takes away all agency.”

Her film The Tale is a quest for truth around the sexual abuse she suffered as a young teen; abuse she saw as a relationship, not a manipulation of power.

The protagonist Jennifer Fox (she used her own name for the character) is played by Laura Dern, who Fox called “the most authentic actresses I can think of.”

Just a few months after dozens of women came forward to share their stories of sexual harassment under the Me Too movement, Fox found herself at a filmmakers breakfast for the Sundance film festival in London, which features several films that show the world from a woman’s perspective.

The Tale is a fictional representation of Fox’s life, but there isn’t a question about its veracity. Jennifer Fox was just 13 when she had a sexual “relationship” with two adult coaches.

Speaking to Express.co.uk, Fox said she was in search of the truth through fiction, using imagination and fantasy because there were many things she would never fully know.

“That it happened I know is true, that the events are real, that’s true. Why? How? I have no idea. I will never know because they will never tell me, therefore I have to imagine it,” she said.

The “they” in question are Bill and Mrs G (Jason Ritter and Elizabeth Debicki), the riding instructor and his partner who take Jennifer under their wing but shift the power dynamics and Jennifer is manipulated into a relationship she can’t see for what it is.

Even now, years later, Fox’s understanding of what happened to her is ever-evolving: “It’s amazing that it took me so long to even question this narrative I told myself.”

The Tale is 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.

Fox elaborated: “In the Western World, we say now that we know ‘the truth’ was abuse, that replaces the other stories and I don’t believe that so how do we include the fact that as a child I loved this man, I got things from it, it strengthened my sense of self AND it hurt me and took things from me.”

Dern’s retrospection as a series of flashbacks is one way of including those facts and her image of herself as a young teen changes from tall and older to younger and slighter as Dern’s Jennifer flips through her own memories, and photographs, to shape a whole picture of her childhood.

The Tale tells three stories: present Laura Dern searching her memories, the memories themselves, and a meta-exploration of the nature of memory and truth, particularly from the eyes of a child.

Fox is very clear in her understanding of these multiple threads of truth, but isn’t one to shift blame away from Bill and Mrs G.

“What you pray is that the adult keeps the line, because the child will press against that line but what the child really wants is for the adult to uphold the boundary and allow their friendship and adoration to exist without crossing into sexuality,” she said.

When it does cross the line, hindsight can be just as damaging.

She added: “For people with trauma, memories can be protective and people need to respect they are trying to survive with trauma, and how long it takes them [to come forward] is nobody else’s right to determine.”

On the flip side, Fox doesn’t take kindly to heavy-handed pity. “If I could smack the number of people who said, “oh you poor thing.” I’m not a poor thing I survived. Look at me.”

The Tale makes it impossible not to look at Fox, and it will be of some comfort to survivors reconciling their own complex pasts and make the conversation around childhood sexual assault that much less taboo.

The Tale is playing at Picturehouse Central in London as part of the Sundance Film Festival: London and is available to stream on HBO Go.