Call Jane opens with bored, glammed-up suburban housewife Joy (Elizabeth Banks, coiffed like Betty Draper from Mad Men) stumbling into a line of riot police facing off against ‘hippy freak’ protesters. She’s horrified when she witnesses one of them slammed against the wall and beaten while she’s ushered away. This first scene neatly contextualises this story: the times they are a changin’, and Joy must soon confront the reality of living in late 1960s America. Sadly, it's a reality that has unexpected timeliness today after the US Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade in 2022, ending the national legality of abortions in the US.
Director Phyllis Nagy, best known for her Academy Award-nominated screenplay for Carol, brings humour and heart to this fictionalised story of the Jane Collective, a group who provided safe but illegal abortions in the late '60s. Denied a legal abortion even though her pregnancy will kill her, Joy finds a literal lifeline on a poster telling her to ‘Call Jane’, and transforms from sorrowful to a symbol of hope and renewal. Shot on time period-authentic 16mm film, Call Jane doesn’t shy away from the terror of obtaining an illegal abortion. Joy’s procedure plays out in real time, rendered all the more harrowing with tight close-ups on Banks’ stricken face.
But the film is hardly as grim as it might sound. Joy, and the audience alongside her, is enveloped by the warmth of Sigourney Weaver’s tough-as-nails Virginia and her inspiring, never judgmental gang of activists helping women with nowhere else to turn. Elizabeth Banks, always a reliable comedic actor, gives Joy a sense of, well, joy, even when her secret strains her family life to breaking point. Nothing is particularly revelatory about the filmmaking here, and it certainly covers a difficult and dangerous time in history with a Hollywood sheen. But thanks to a sharp script and winning performances — who wouldn’t trust Sigourney Weaver with their life? — Call Jane threads the needle of being serious without being preachy, funny without feeling frivolous.