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Canberra Today 18°/23° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Tabloid (M) ★ ★ ★

IN “Tabloid”, documentarist Errol Morris lets the people involved tell what British print media in the 1970s called the “Kidnapped Mormon Story”, a cheque-book journalism jumble of fantasy, reality, love, despair, exploitation.

Joyce McKinney, a pretty, bosomy, mid-western blonde, wanted marriage and a family. But the young man she fell in love had Mormon parents who opposed the relationship.

So the Mormons sent him to Britain. Joyce raised money to follow him by advertising her availability to provide erotic delights. When the pair fled to a Devon cottage, the Mormon hierarchy called Scotland Yard. A war to tell the juicy story erupted between two of the raciest tabloid papers.

In 2009, Joyce, a chubby ditz with guts and persuasive flair, tells her story seriously. We watch and listen, oscillating between belief and derision. The Mormons do not come off well. Verification of Joyce’s tale is no longer possible. She says her records were stolen. When one of the papers changed proprietors, the file containing the soft-porn pictures and cuttings about her adventures in the skin trade somehow got lost.

Errol Morris tells it as he found it. Taking a side would serve no useful purpose. I laughed frequently. The film’s underlying question is, why has Joyce spent four decades celibate and alone instead of accepting reality and getting a life with another partner? The coda about cloning her dog says more between the lines than on the screen.

At Greater Union

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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