Tabloid

Saw Tabloid, a documentary about an American woman, Joyce, who kidnapped the Mormon love of her life and then lost him back to the church and to a swirling maelstrom of British tabloid exploitation. She tells her story, spinning it as a desperate love affair that the world conspired against. The tabloid reporters, with knowing smile and jaundiced eye, tell a tale of exploitation of a woman who may well be insane. Joyce's mental health is the most fascinating thing in the film. She clearly does not take the British kidnapping charges seriously at all, traipsing around in farcical disguises and selling "her story" with a smile and wink. Has she told herself a lie so often that she now believes it or is she just the slightly-calculating flower child she presents herself as? At one point, she compares herself to narcissus. It's unclear if this is supposed to be flattering or self-deprecating.

Her would-be boyfriend is unfortunately not available for interview, but it is his contention that he was grabbed at gunpoint, with chloroform. She contends that the Mormon church brainwashed him. An ex-Mormon provides some perspective, that the social/religious mores of the church may have contributed to the situation, but he never exactly sides with Joyce. Joyce's past and actions don't jibe with her persona. We hear she worked as a model but that she can easily produce envelopes full of cash. What kind of model she is exactly becomes clear (although Joyce contends that the photos are all composites and frauds.) Clearly we aren't hearing the true story (Joyce herself, font of accidental insight, tells us only god knows the truth) and the stories we are hearing are contradictory and powerfully evocative. In the end, it's more interesting and more fun to fantasize about a sex-crazed madwoman kidnapping a Mormon than it is to contemplate a failed elopement (which may very well be the truth.)

Rashomon-like, the film obscures as it reveals. An interesting film, it mainly allows the characters to tell their own stories, the reporters bemusedly telling their interpretation or spin on the facts, Joyce chuckling and weeping, and old friends wrinkling their brows. There's also a bewildering twist ending involving dog-cloning which functions (I guess) to reinforce the theme of obedience and mastery. As a whole the film seems to argue that Joyce was a would-be master over her lover, but that she became a slave to the (possibly concocted) narrative. Fascinating, lurid, bewildering stuff.