he whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!” chants a group of student protesters – “yippies”, in the eyes of suspicious, coiffed lawyers – in the opening scene of Call Jane, screenwriter Phyllis Nagy’s meticulous, if not revelatory, film on an underground network of abortion providers in Chicago. It’s August 1968, five years before Roe v Wade, and the energy is combustible enough to ruffle even Joy , a suburban housewife pregnant with her second child.
Thus Joy is initiated into the Jane Collective, and Call Jane into a restrained, though sharper than it could’ve been, ode to heroism of the past acts of radical generosity and courage which could hold a dark echo for the future, as Roe v Wade rests on the supreme court’s chopping block this year. The real Jane Collective women are explored in another Sundance film this year, the HBO documentary The Janes; one of its participants, Judith Arcana, served as a historical consultant on Call Jane.
, in which Banks evocatively plays another conservative midwesterner turned feminist activist. That’s not a criticism, per se; it’s refined, sensitive, humanized historicism, with clear arc and stakes, a stylized window into a different time.It’s worth questioning the decision to use a white, conventionally beautiful suburban housewife whose abortion is a stark matter of life and death as an entreé into this world.
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