Errol Morris’s latest epic features former beauty queen Joyce McKinney, who was just your average American girl until a few twists and turns landed her smack in the center of a 1970s scandal. The details of the story are far too rich and warped for us to leak in a spoiler. You owe it to yourself to hear them directly from those involved. We’ll offer only this teaser—kidnapping, sex, and false identities are just the beginning. Using his signature Interrotron, a teleprompter that projects Morris’s face onto the lens so that the interviewee must look him in the eye, Morris asks Joyce to recount thoroughly the absurd events she became known for. He also interviews others who played significant roles in the story but remember it slightly differently. At its core, the film is not so much a portrait of Joyce as a dizzying exposition of the bizarre distortions spawned at the intersection of tabloid culture, celebrity, and eccentricity. The “truth” is entertainingly elusive in this classic Morris fable.

(Full Frame)