Ask E. Jean

With the sharply structured documentary Ask E. Jean, director Ivy Meeropol accomplishes the near-impossible, telling the story of Carroll in a manner as consistently enthralling and unapologetic as its subject.

The sheer creepiness of Trump is what is so striking.

Instead of assessing, it observes and assumes the audience is as enraptured with the subject’s insouciance as the filmmakers are.

Carroll may have made her bones as someone with ready answers and an irrepressible spirit, but Meeropol’s film is best when its subject finally realizes even the best advice only applies in the moment, in certain places, for certain people. Living in the after of those questions? That’s much more important.

Here is a fascinating woman in her own right, distilled in the public imagination to someone else’s crime.

Carroll is a phenomenally compelling subject, and her magnetic, joyful presence at the center of the film holds it together.