Jenny is in her 40s when she gets a worried phone call from her mother (The Exorcist’s Ellen Burstyn) who has found a story Jenny wrote when she was at summer camp as a 13-year-old. It told of her “relationship” with a running coach in his 40s by the name of Bill Allens, the partner of her beautiful, captivating equestrian trainer Mrs G.

When gazing back on her youth, Jenny rebuilt her 13-year-old self into a tall, early-maturing teenager, and her time with Bill into nothing more sinister than a relationship with an older man. However, as she embarks on a painful journey into her blurry past, she begins to come to terms with the reality of her story: that she was a child; a child groomed by Mrs G and raped by her husband.

Praised at 2018’s Sundance Film Festival as one of the first great #MeToo movies, Fox actually started working on the project more than a decade ago – proof that survival stories likes hers are far from unique to today, it’s just that people are finally listening to them.

Jason Ritter (Girls) and The Night Manager’s Elizabeth Debicki (above) put in chillingly charismatic performances as Bill Allens and Mrs G, Burstyn is powerful as she wrestles with the heartbreak of discovering her daughter’s trauma, and Isabelle Nélisse (Mama) and Jessica Sarah Flaum combine to shine a devastating spotlight on Fox’s story as two different versions of a young Jenny.

But it’s Dern’s nuanced performance in this already powerful story that makes it so weightily real, like a 10lb dumbbell dropped onto your chest. Fox’s story will still stay with you weeks after turning off the TV – and so it should.

The Tale, available to buy on the Virgin Media Store

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