![]() But Polley cannily employs old home movie footage from her parents’ early years together (including some haunting black-and-white footage of Diane performing in a local TV show). “Stories We Tell” could have been a succession of talking heads. And he informs us that in sexual matters she was much more adventurous and frustrated by his lack of physical passion. Throughout their marriage she urged him to write, to exercise his creative genius. In fact, Michael suggests that Diane fell not in love with him but with the dynamic character he was playing on stage when she first saw him. Though both were actors, she was outgoing, daring and vivacious while he was a conservative homebody. It is quickly established that the Diane-Michael marriage was an unlikely one. One of her sons recalls watching “I Love Lucy” as a child and thinking it was based on his mom. ![]() Diane was a vivacious woman – a sometimes actress – overflowing with energy. Polley wants them to talk about her mother. Also testifying are aunts, uncles, family friends, and others. We quickly learn that we’ll be hearing family stories from others of the Polley clan, including Sarah’s two sisters and two brothers, who submit to “interrogation” by their younger sibling with varying degrees of charm and discomfort. The man is her father, Michael Polley, an actor, who sits before a microphone reading from his own memoir about his marriage to Diane Polley, Sarah’s late mother. “Stories We Tell” begins with Polley accompanying an elderly man up several flights of stairs to a Toronto recording studio. Polley is, of course, the Canadian actress (“Dawn of the Dead,” “The Sweet Hereafter”) who has established herself as a very promising director with “Away from Her” (a superb film about Alzheimer’s) and “Take This Waltz” (about an unfaithful wife…I was less enraptured of that one). Standout examples include Ross McElwee’s “Sherman’s March” and Jonathan Caouette’s “Tarnation.”īut I cannot recall anything quite like Sarah Polley’s “Stories We Tell,” an investigation into the secrets of her family, her parents’ marriage and her own birth. Over the last 20 years we’ve grown accustomed to the “personal documentary” in which a filmmaker’s own life becomes the subject of his/her nonfiction film. ![]() “STORIES WE TELL” My rating: B+ (Opening June 7 at the Tivoli ) Daughter and dad: Sarah and Michael Polley
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