The Seven Faces Of Jane is an interesting concept on paper, but the directors' conflicting visions make it confusing and disjointed. Still, Gillian Jacobs is wonderful.
The Seven Faces Of Jane takes a movie and divides it into seven segments, each directed by a different person. In the opening scene, Jane leaves her young daughter, Molly, at summer camp for a week, and what follows is a strange recap of the days that follow, until she finally picks her up from camp. She crosses paths with exes, picks up a hitchhiker, and even goes to therapy. There's a lot going on here and it's often hard to keep up with it.
Directors: Julian Acosta, Xan Cassavetes, Gia Coppola
Writers: Julian Acosta, Xan Cassavetes, Ben Del Vecchio
Stars: Gillian Jacobs, Joel McHale, Sybil Azur
While the concept is certainly interesting, it's pretty apparent that the different directors had no idea what each other was doing. In theory this is a fun experiment, but in reality it makes for a very jarring and incohesive movie. There are pieces of a whole story here, but it never fully comes together.
In fact, at the end of the movie, it seems like too much happened, but nothing happened either. It's a weird, twisty, bizarre plot line that's often right up my alley. The biggest problem here is that the segments never connect in a way that makes sense. It sounds like some sort of anthology, and the fact that it's supposed to take place over a week actually doesn't make sense. Each story is so different that even the main character of Jane feels like a whole new character as each piece of the puzzle unfolds. I made the resolution not to bother reviewing anthology movies a few years ago.
Basically, they're a way to get critics to rate short films, which, regardless of their value in teaching filmmakers, helping them hone their craft, and creating proof for agents and producers that they know what they're doing with actors, equipment and a camera. , the audience for them is small. The audience for their reviews consists of the filmmakers and their families (often the people who paid for the film), even smaller ones.
Considering how labor-intensive they are for a reviewer (so many actor, writer, and director names to list and attach to each "short"), it's much easier to just use the four-letter word "approve" when introducing them.
Not that “The Seven Faces of Jane” is an anthology movie, not like movies like “Paris, J’taime” and “vhs”. It's a couples story that the filmmakers describe as a film version of the Exquisite Corpse Game, usually done with many hands drawing a group effort sketch or painting.
Eight directors and eleven writers would take one character, Jane, played by actress-writer-director Gillian Jacobs, and put her through a series of scenarios over the course of a day in which she drops off her daughter at camp. I like Gillian Jacobs (“Ibiza”). We'll see.
Jacobs would write and direct the opening and ending framing scenes, and others' sequences would imagine Jane driving her new hatchback and mixing in with the antics at a surreal coffee shop where her doppelganger works, being "called" for a long time. Svengali-style idle agent to audition in a mausoleum and catch up with an ex-lover (Chido Nwokocha) while her black friends and their black Afro-funk ensemble and dance troupe perform on a beach.
Joel McHale plays another near-ex who he bumps into, goes on a hike, and has something of a tearful epiphany about roads not being taken and high school reunions he might have been better off skipping.
Jane picks up an exotic hitchhiker in the desert on that oft-filmed lonely road outside Joshua Tree. They serve the men as Jane gives off a mental institution escaped, possibly suicidal, behind-the-wheel vibe. She later meets and tries to cheer up a very unhappy Latina teenager (Daniela Hernandez) who has stormed out of her quinceañera in this big fancy dress that she hates and heels that she can't handle.
She looks at the credits below and you can see some famous people (Jacobs and Dr. Funnyman Ken Jeong) and some famous movie names (Coppola, Cassavetes) who collaborated on this.
The "Seven Faces" segments are competently wedged into this "corpse" of a narrative. But no, "Jane" doesn't work as a feature. It's the kind of indulgent bauble that might haunt film festivals, where audiences will see and appreciate short films and "experiments" or "games" like this. Having some famous names on board would help sell tickets, but again, only at a film festival.
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