SCREEN | Gillian Jacobs Finds 'The Seven Faces of Jane'

"Everyone struggles to find a version of themselves that they like."

Gravitas Ventures

The Seven Faces of Jane, an experimental anthology indie road film conceived by producer Roman Coppola as an "exquisite corpse" blind collaboration starring Gillian Jacobs as the eponymous heroine, is a surrealist vision of a woman tumbling through eight different strange mini-adventures. It's an odd but often emotional series of small character pieces.

Each of the conceptual short films weaved together is directed by a different filmmaker including Jacobs herself (responsible for the opening and closing segments), Alexandra Cassavetes, Ryan Heffington, Ken Jeong, Gia Coppola, Boma Iluma, Julian Acosta, and Alex Takacs. Loosely strung together by the lead character of Jane going through an offbeat odyssey after dropping her daughter off at camp, there's purposely almost no continuity or unified storytelling apart from Jacobs' stongly committed performance.

It's an altogether muddled yet intriguing filmmaking experiment of diverging artistic tones. Aside from allowing Jacobs an open stage to show her true range of emotional capabilities and performance abilities through the different directorial voices, the largely unstructured The Seven Faces of Jane never totally shows us the worthwhile nature of its eight-part conception. In fact, the whole thing feels more like an excercise of pure concept (albeit an interesting one) than a fleshed-out endeavour.

The Seven Faces of Jane will be available through digital and video on demand starting January 13th.


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