By Adam Bloodworth
In new abortion drama Call Jane, one female character ends up pregnant because she believes men can’t pull out once they’ve started having penetrative sex. Another didn’t know that standing up having sex could lead to pregnancy. Call Jane is stuffed with revealing moments about the discrimination women who needed abortions faced in the middle of last century. It’s also a necessary reminder that abortions weren’t legal in the US until 1973 and in the UK until 1967.
Joy lives a quiet, thrill-less life in the suburbs when she falls pregnant and soon discovers she has a rare condition which puts her chances of surviving childbirth at 50/50. The medical board at her local hospital unanimously refuse her request for an abortion, performed only in exceptional circumstances decided upon by a group of men. But when she discovers a backstreet illegal abortion doctor she becomes embroiled within a group of activist women helping organise abortions.
Elizabeth Banks does a fine job as Joy, serving spritzy rebel housewife vibes that only women-hating men couldn’t get behind. Sigourney Weaver is in auto-pilot as privileged White feminist Virginia who has a singular vision of what helping people looks like. Virginia lacks empathy for women – predominantly from the Black community – who can’t pay the doctor $600 for an illegal abortion. The trouble is that there isn’t much else going on by way of jeopardy or plot turns once we’re through the first half, which is when the grittiest abortion scenes take place, which are gripping and again, a necessary education especially for younger audiences.
That’s not to say it doesn’t look nice. Phyllis Nagy’s direction does well to capture the entrapment of housewives of the era. Shot on 16mm film authentic to the period, for a good forty minutes you don’t often see outside the dingy suburban interiors where Joy works as a housewife, and when you do, you almost feel like you need to take a deep breath like the characters. Here is a claustrophobic world pitted against females, and it’s a nuanced touch that husband Will, played by Chris Messina, isn’t a monster but something way more commonplace: an ordinary guy from the era who believes women should cook him dinner every night at the expense of going to an art class.
We need a couple more properly sketched characters, and to hear their tales properly fleshed out, particularly Weaver’s, who doesn’t get to be real because she’s too busy as a prop representing the second wave feminist movement. Perhaps a few additional couples and their struggles being zoomed in on would have put more meat on the bones: but either way, Call Jane is a worthwhile history lesson.
Call Jane is in cinemas now
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