MOVIE PREMIERE: Laura Dern has had, and continues to have, a long and storied career as a movie actress. But on TV, of late, she’s found and delivered many of her most challenging and impressive roles: as Renata on HBO’s
Big Little Lies, Diane on Showtime’s
Twin Peaks reboot, Amy in HBO’s
Enlightened, Katherine Harris in HBO’s
Recount, and… need I go on? Okay, I will, long ago, to her playing the title role in HBO’s
Citizen Ruth and, famously, the lesbian friend in the coming-out “Puppy” episode of ABC’s
Ellen. And now, in this new HBO movie, she plays Jennifer Fox, a documentary filmmaker whose mother (played by Ellen Burstyn) presents her with a letter, written when Jennifer was a child, inferring that she may have been raped at age 13, an experience, if it happened, she subsequently repressed and forgot. So using her documentary tools, adult Jennifer sets out to investigate her own past. The story told in this new telemovie is based on fact – and one fact worth noting is that the writer and director of
The Tale, starring Laura Dern as Jennifer Fox, is a filmmaker named… Jennifer Fox.
For full reviews, see Ed Bark's Uncle Barky's Bytes and
David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower.