The Tale

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.

ABOUT ARIEL MARX
An award-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist, Ariel Marx draws from many different genres and often combines orchestral and rare instruments with electronics to create unique worlds of sound. Her scores have premiered alongside films at national and international film festivals, such as Sundance, Tribeca, and SXSW—winning awards at several for her musical contributions.

Most recently, Ariel wrote the score for Jennifer Fox’s THE TALE (starring Laura Dern, Elizabeth Debicki, Jason Ritter, Ellen Burstyn, Common and John Heard), Shawn Snyder's TO DUST (starring Géza Röhrig and Matthew Broderick), and Sarah Pirozek's #LIKE (starring Sarah Rich and Marc Menchacha).

She has also scored dramas WEST OF HER by Ethan Warren and Ryan Caraway's BY JINGO, and Armen Perian's interactive augmented reality film about a family of human traffickers, THE ANGRY RIVER. Additionally, she has scored numerous award-winning short films that have played at the world's premiere festivals including — most recently — Mariama Diallo's HAIR WOLF (Sundance, SXSW), Laura Moss's FRY DAY (SXSW, Tribeca).

Outside of film, she has scored television series including comedy series UnChartered and The Pioneers. Ariel has additionally contributed to BLIND tarring Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin, and assisted composer Marcelo Zarvos on Showtime’s THE AFFAIR starring Dominic West and Ruth Wilson, as well as, Amazon’s Z: THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING (starring Christina Ricci and David Strathairn and WONDER (starring Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson).