Stories We Tell

Directed by Sarah Polley

(PG-13)

****

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This “transformative, unforgettable work” begins as a modest documentary but “becomes something much larger,” said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. As the film opens, actress turned director Sarah Polley seems merely to be constructing a portrait of her mother, a little-known actress who died when Sarah was 11. But as friends and intimates of Diane Polley share their memories, we discover that Sarah’s biological father may not be the father she’s always known, and the movie we’re watching transforms into “a gripping investigation of the ultimately unknowable past.” Sarah Polley eventually gets the facts nailed down, said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. But she’s actually more interested in the different ways her mother’s contemporaries have organized those facts in their memories. When we see Diane’s husband, Michael, brought to tears by Sarah’s discovery, we must remember that he too trained as an actor, said David Thomson in The New Republic. “Actors learn sooner than most of us that in the genre known as real life, you have to play the part if you want to be understood.”