Talk Therapy

Sarah Polley, a former child star, has made a searingly frank film about sexual assault.

- By Rebecca Mead

When Sarah Polley, the film director and writer, was in her twenties and early thirties, she entertained friends at dinner parties by telling a story about her worst date ever, which she went on at the age of sixteen. Polley had become famous as a child actor—by her early teens, she was a household name in her native Canada, starring in Road to Avonlea,” a nostalgic television series inspired by the beloved children’s books of L. M. Montgomery. In 1995, a year after she left that show, she was asked out by Jian Ghomeshi, a CBC radio broadcaster and a well-known Canadian cultural figure a dozen years her senior. They went on a date and returned to his apartment, where he played her songs recorded by Moxy Frtivous, a satirical folk-pop band that he had co-founded. So far, so cringey. He kissed her, then informed her that he was into pretty weird stuff.” Polley, who is slight of build, with a quick, exuberant laugh, would finish her tale by describing how Ghomeshi had run his hands all over her still-clothed body at speed, while repeating a peculiar incantation: You're in Hell! There’s Devil hands all over your body!” The encounter that followed, Polley told her amused, appalled listeners, put her off one-night stands forever.