Call Jane

The pro­duc­tion of a film can take years and years, so it’s hard to pre­dict the cli­mate into which a long ges­tat­ed sto­ry will be birthed. So, this, the year that saw Roe v Wade over­ruled in Amer­i­ca dra­mat­i­cal­ly changed the tone through with talk­ing abort­ed foe­tus­es of Blonde, and the hero­ic work of the Jane Col­lec­tive will be viewed.

The Jane Col­lec­tive was formed in the late 60s, becom­ing obso­lete in 1973 when abor­tion was made (tem­porar­i­ly) legal across all of Amer­i­ca, and helped women in need of safe abor­tions. Direct­ed by Phyl­lis Nagy who is best known for writ­ing 2015’s les­bian Christ­mas movie Car­ol, the film tells of The Jane Collectivism’s hero­ism through the fic­tion­al lens of glam­orous sub­ur­ban house­wife Joy (Eliz­a­beth Banks) who dis­cov­ers that her sec­ond preg­nan­cy will like­ly kill her. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Joy, the med­ical and legal estab­lish­ment deems that her life is a sac­ri­fice they are will­ing to make.

She seeks help from, and then joins, The Jane Col­lec­tive, head­ed up by tough cook­ie Vir­ginia (Sigour­ney Weaver) and a mot­ley crew of sec­ond wave fem­i­nists. Many of the per­for­mances are impres­sive, par­tic­u­lar­ly Weaver and Wun­mi Mosaku as Gwen, tasked with keep­ing the group from going full-blown white fem­i­nist #girl­boss. The dia­logue has pol­ish and nuance, but there is a strange lev­i­ty of tone that keeps the film from feel­ing sub­stan­tial enough for the sub­ject matter. 

Zip­py duo­logues, expert­ly teased bee­hives and stun­ning late ​‘60s cos­tumes may make this pro-choice mes­sage more palat­able to the mass­es but ulti­mate­ly the film pulls its punch­es, nev­er lin­ger­ing long enough on a sin­gle scene or tragedy to let the impact of these women’s work con­sume the audi­ence. Even with a nev­er-bet­ter Banks expert­ly tow­ing the dram­e­dy line, her reluc­tant hero nar­ra­tive builds to a hol­low tri­umph in light of con­tem­po­rary horrors. 

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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