Tabloid

last updated 8 January 2015

Directed by Errol Morris (R)

****

Errol Morris’s newest documentary can be viewed two ways, said Dana Stevens in Slate.com. One is to watch it as a “meditation on celebrity journalism, erotic obsession, and the inherent unreality of the narrative voice.” The other is to see it as a “sexy, sordid, sometimes hilarious freak show.” Morris, who won an Oscar for The Fog of War, tells the story of Joyce McKinney, a Southern beauty queen who became a British-tabloid sensation in the 1970s after kidnapping her Mormon ex-boyfriend outside London, chaining him to a bed, and, for three days, engaging him in what may or may not have been consensual sex. Much of the film is McKinney sharing her side of the story, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. With “her buoyant laugh and ready tears,” she makes it difficult for us to tell if she’s a brilliant performer or just insane. Morris remains a “storyteller of the highest order,” said Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Within seconds, he draws us into his subject, doling out details, making us wonder what will happen next.” His film, by the end, even imparts a moral lesson—that McKinney has less to be embarrassed about than do the journalists who spent their careers “searching for ways to humiliate people.”