‘The Janes’ Review: A Stirring Documentary Account of the Trailblazing Underground Abortion Network
25.01.2022 - 05:53
/ variety.com
Guy Lodge Film CriticIf the Jane Collective has gone under-credited in American women’s rights history over the last half-century, independent cinema is doing its best to make up for lost time. Right on the heels of Phyllis Nagy’s colorful fictionalized drama “Call Jane,” “The Janes” is the second film at this year’s Sundance festival dedicated to the female-staffed, Chicago-based underground service that provided over 11,000 illegal abortions to women in need between 1968 and 1973, at which point Roe v.
Wade rendered their work triumphantly obsolete. Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes’ documentary is the more straight-and-sober account of the Janes’ work and legacy, though in sticking to the facts, it remains plenty rousing.
Its inspiring arc may be unavoidably undercut by our knowledge of Roe v. Wade’s imperiled status in current American law, but if anything, that unspoken contemporary context underlines the need to amplify this history: A brace of Jane films couldn’t be better timed.
Produced by HBO Documentary Films and set for release on HBO platforms later this year, “The Janes” makes little effort to fashion itself as big-screen fare. Sticking strictly to a conventional formula of talking-head interviews and mostly generic archive footage, it’s a plainly televisual outing, displaying little of the structural or stylistic vigor that marked Lessin’s two previous co-directing credits, “Trouble the Water” and “Citizen Koch.” That is perhaps by design.
“The Janes” aims to engage its audience solely on the testimony of its interviewees — mostly past members of the collective itself, along with various allies and spouses. Their stories prove detailed and compelling enough to carry the day, even if the filmmaking does little to
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