Joy (Elizabeth Banks) and her husband, Will (Chris Messina) are getting ready to welcome a new baby into their family, but when Joy receives troubling news about the viability of her pregnancy and the hospital advisory board does not approve an abortion, she takes matter into her own hands.  She contacts “Jane,” an organization led by Virginia (Sigourney Weaver) to provide safe abortions outside of the hospital system.  After her procedure, Joy begins to help more and more, eventually mentoring under Dr. Dean (Cory Michael Smith) to learn the procedure and expand the network’s capability to serve the community. 

Call Jane is a timely biopic directed by Phyllis Nagy from a script by Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi.  Released by Roadside Attractions, the film sheds light on a pivotal piece of American history, but it fails to really stand on its own apart from the general feeling of importance.  This is not a discredit to the real people on which the film is based, but rather a pointed finger towards the team behind the film who do not frame the story in the most effective way, nor do they effectively utilize its 121-minute run time.  What results is a floundering narrative with muddy character arcs – especially in the supporting cast – that gets by on its sense of urgency for dealing with the timely issue of safe abortion access in the United States. 

At the heart of the film is Banks’ Joy and her performance, especially in the first act while she is navigating a healthcare system that does not have her best interests in mind, is one of the highlights of the film.  Schore and Sethi’s script does a great job at putting audiences in Joy’s mindset; an expectant mother excited to welcome a new life to the family, but the growing concerns over her own heart problems are always looming over her.  The film doubles down on her feeling of alienation when the hospital board unilaterally denies her request to have her pregnancy terminated on the grounds that her and the baby’s health may be at risk, but it is not a 100% chance of stillbirth or death to the mother, so she must carry to term.  She is spoken about, and never spoken to, despite sitting there at the table, and as her frustration grows she finally leaves the room and seeks alternative solutions. 

It is this section of the film that is most harrowing given the current state of limbo in which the procedure currently sits some 60 years after the events of the film.  Treated with the slightest twinge of dark humor, the secretary tells Joy she could always just slip and fall down the stairs.  Nagy later places the camera so we see Joy standing at the top of a flight of stairs in her own home, but she cannot bring herself to fall, catching herself on the railing.  Her daughter, Charlotte (Grace Edwards), comes rushing to her aid while Will, seemingly more annoyed at the ruckus than concerned, stands in the doorway to the bedroom to see what the commotion is all about.   

This feeling of desperation will give way to absolute fear in the coming scenes as Joy makes her way into the city and finds a flyer advertising Jane’s number.  The most important thing that Call Jane does right, though, is it does not sensationalize abortion as a procedure, but it still instills the fear of safety that comes with performing an operation outside of the hospital setting.  Nagy’s sparse use of score in Call Jane is never more apparent when Joy is undergoing her own procedure as the more manipulative approach would be to have an evocative piece playing in the background, instead, the camera watches in silence as Dean narrates the procedure like a robot, and Joy endures this trial alone.  They say it multiple times throughout the film: this is as safe as it can be.  The meaning is twofold, and it stings no matter which way it is examined; it is safer than some other alternative methods, but it is only as safe as one can make a room that has been rented from the mob. 

The biggest roadblock for the film is in its script, though, because outside of Joy, everyone in her orbit operates on such a strange plane that it is nearly impossible to track the decisions from one scene to the next.  The biggest example of this is her husband, Will, whose thoughts on the issues at hand regarding his wife’s jeopardized pregnancy are always influx as he oscillates from supporting her wish to abort but then makes comments that seem to undermine her.  It is frustrating to watch, perhaps purposefully, but the script does not give Messina enough to work with to build up Will to support this floundering stance.   

The same lack of support runs through all of the secondary characters.  Charlotte is written as a generic moody teenager who acts out for attention and bluntly represents another opposing viewpoint in the film which Schore and Sethi are wholly uninterested in developing or entertaining any kind of dialogue.  Even played to audiences who agree with safe access to abortion will find that Call Jane’s avoidance of debate is frustrating because as the film ignores the questions asked, that lack of an answer can be misconstrued as not having an answer at all.  As for the other characters, Dean disappears completely once he is no longer needed and it is as if he never existed in the first place even though he would surely be interested in the later developments of the plot as Joy and Virginia begin working as free agents. Virginia is underdeveloped and used primarily to solve problems, and Lana (Kate Mara), the neighbor, has a small plotline that ultimately leads nowhere.  It feels like there is a longer version of this film that does more for these characters, but the cut that made it on screen is a bit of a mess and lacks the structure to give these characters a reason to be involved in the story. 

Call Jane, in a better timeline, would be accused of simply sitting back and looking at how far we have come, but through a series of unfortunate events, it instead shows just how much nothing has changed. A harrowing look backward to inform a potential future. It is unfair to criticize the film that premiered at Sundance 2022 before the sweeping rulings read down by the Supreme Court in the later weeks of the summer, but it does not change how toothless the narrative is. There is no fire, no drive, and no call to action. It is such a passive film for a volatile issue that it really begs to question what drove the team to make this film as presented. The thesis that there is no such thing as illegal abortions, only unsafe abortions is not driven home, in fact, it is barely examined. As a down-the-line biopic about the Jane Collective, there is little to be gleaned other than that it existed; never has there been a film more begging for concluding intertitles that help fill in the legacy left behind by the events of the film.  It is not simply enough to make a film about an important topic and let the weight of the issues do the heavy lifting, and in this case, the weight of its very own subject matter causes Call Jane to crumble and collapse leaving behind pieces of a narrative that barely fit together to form a full and cohesive work.