Synopsis
There’s a whole lot more to the story of E. Jean Carroll than the headlines made by her two successful, multimillion dollar lawsuits against Donald Trump, for sexual assault and defamation. Filmmaker Ivy Meeropol takes the occasion of this documentary to richly detail her subject’s incredible life as a media superstar. She was a groundbreaking editor at uber-male enclaves Playboy and Esquire; a writer for “Saturday Night Live,” an advice columnist for Elle (hence the movie’s title), and an author and television host. The film makes deft use of ample archival footage (even Carroll’s 1964 appearance on “To Tell the Truth”) and contemporary interviews not only to create a sense of “life and times,” but to key into some of the painful ironies that arose from a fateful encounter with a future president and a bold decision.