Sundance 2022: Call Jane Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Sundance Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

For the most part, biopics are an easy sell to audiences for which they often resonate with. That being said, they could be whittled down to a simple formula that most tend to follow to decent success. Therefore, if it ain’t broke then why fix it. When it comes to Call Jane, it is another film that follows the same biopic formula to a tee. Conventional filmmaking from top to bottom, it takes a safe approach that perhaps doesn’t go as deep or push as hard in trying to appeal to a wide audience. That being said, it still delivers a solid watch in spite of its safeness thanks to its performances from Elizabeth Banks, Sigourney Weaver, and Wunmi Mosaku. Not as much about a person, the film tells an important story about an important movement whose impact can still be felt today and whose fight unfortunately is still ongoing following a resurgence.

Call Jane is a film about the evolution of the Jane Collective, an underground operation in Chicago known for performing safe yet illegal abortions for a wide range of women during the late 1960s to early 1970s before the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade through the lens of a married, middle upper class housewife named Joy (Banks). Suffering from a pregnancy that threatened her health and unable to get a legal abortion, she sought the Jane Collective, led by a woman named Virginia (Weaver), where was able to procure one despite many reservations. Marginalized in her life and marriage, Joy connected to these women who valued her as a person and over the course of the film, became a bigger part of the collective. The contrast in circumstances of these women made for an interesting dynamic as she found herself in the middle of two worlds. Though it was clear that something would have to give, Joy was a woman who cared and it was easy to connect with that.

Call Jane was not without its issues as pacing-wise, it does lag in the middle, adding to a slightly overlong running time of just over 2 hours. However, what keep it still compelling to watch was its aforementioned performances from Banks, Weaver, and Mosaku as a Joy, Virginia, and a fellow Jane Collective member named Dawn respectively. Banks as Joy grounds the film while hitting just enough emotional beats over a strong character arc. Meanwhile, Weaver and Mosaku were also strong in supporting roles with the latter providing some much needed but not enough perspective.

In the end, Call Jane is fine and successfully tells a story worth being told but may not be the deepest.

*still courtesy of Sundance

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.