“Jane’s Seven Faces” is an anthology film consisting of eight short films shot by different directors with one heroine in the title role. Jane (Gillian Jacobs) sends her daughter to summer camp with a message to fear nothing, make friends and try something new, and she goes on a journey, following her own instructions. “Jane’s Seven Faces” is a classic road movie, in which only the point of departure and the point of arrival of the main character are known, and what happens between these points is the same surprise for the viewer as for the heroine herself.
According to legend, the directors involved in the project did not know the plot of the film and had no idea what their colleagues were shooting. The result was a blind collaboration, the result of which was an “exquisite corpse”, about which the viewer is warned at the very beginning of the film. The director of the plot and denouement of the film was the actress of the film Gillian Jacobs, known to the viewer for roles in the series “Community”, “Girls”, “Love” and “Ocean”. Jacobs had an incredible luck not only to work with eminent directors as an actress, but also to act as a director.
One of the producers of the film was Roman Coppola, the son of director Francis Ford Coppola and among his projects the films Wes Anderson “Train to Darjeeling”, “French Herald” and the films of his sister Sofia Coppola “Somewhere” and “Elite Society”.
The director of each short is easily identified if the viewer is familiar with their work or their family history. The work of Gia Coppola, the niece of Roman Coppola and granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola immediately catches the eye of gangster themes. Xan Cassavetes, from the Cassavetes clan, made the film as if inspired by the work of her family. Humor actor Ken Jeong ("Bachelor Party in Vegas") is impossible to miss and it is difficult not to understand what part of the anthology he shot. The choreographer Ryan Heffington, who staged the dance for the clip of the singer Sia “Chandelier” distinguished himself by staging a sensual short that stands out from the rest of the work. Black director Boma Iluma predictably shot a story about a black guy with African music and dance. Julian Acosta with a sonorous Latin American surname told the story of a sad Mexican teenage girl, and yet little-known director Alex Takacs shot a creepy surreal story in a columbarium, which stands out from the entire list of works by an unusual look at a fairly simple situation.
Despite the bold idea, the result was not an “exquisite corpse”, but Frankenstein’s bride, because although the introduction is clear – a single mother travels across America in search of adventure, her motivation is not clear to the viewer. Familiar people, meeting her on the way, confuse the story even more strongly, not allowing you to understand what role they played in her life and why she met with them in this period of time, if only to cause negative emotions, and strangers with whom she encounters lead to a conversation in which the viewer learns a lot about the heroine, but this does not lead anywhere, since it is not possible to collect the image of Jane to the end of the film. The individual stories themselves have a right to life, but in the context of the film are not edited together and "Jane's Seven Faces" is more like a set of short notes about heroin, if they were written by people who know nothing about Jane. And although the films were shot by the unconditionally talented children of their famous parents and other bright representatives of Hollywood, these short films are more like unremarkable works of film school graduates, who, if they were not beautifully wrapped in a bow in the form of a producer with the name Coppola, then hardly anyone was interested and touched. It is obvious that Gillian Jacobs in the role of Jane is very trying and even trying on completely different roles, but her game is just as good as movies for low-budget student work.