The Seven Faces of Jane is a unique and experimental film that is powered mainly by its intriguing concept. The film is an improvised and collaborative work by eight directors, featuring Gillian Jacobs as the lead character, Jane, who is an actress and single mother. The film is essentially eight short films that revolve around Jane as she drops her young son off at day camp and spends the remainder of the day (and night) on a rambling journey.
The film shifts gears between surrealist experiment, relationship drama, and psychological analysis, which is equally indebted to Freud's talking cure and a Tarot card deck. The whole thing is held together, loosely, by producer-impresario Roman Coppola, who initiated and oversaw the project, and by Jacobs, who appears in every segment and also directed the framing scenes. The directorial roster is rounded out by Alex Takacs; Roman's niece (and Francis Ford Coppola's granddaughter) Gia Coppola ("Palo Alto"); filmmaker and visual artist Bomo Illuma; filmmaker/dancer/choreographer Ryan Heffington; Xan Cassavetes ("Kiss of the Damned"); actor Julian Acosta; and Jacobs' "Community" castmate Ken Jeong.
The script was devised in the spirit of the "exquisite corpse" collaborative method, in which members of a group contribute words or images in sequence, sometimes without knowledge of what came before. As you can imagine, this kind of approach is at odds with any notion of neatness or overall consistency, and in fact, Roman Coppola has said that he exhorted every filmmaker to follow their own muse and be true to whatever their own vision of a segment happened to be.
Certain basic images or situations were selected in advance so that locations could be prepared, but beyond that, everyone had free rein. The result feels like a return to film school for industry veterans of varying ages and experience levels-an exercise, at times a lark. The cheerfully counterintuitive nature of the project provides whatever appeal it has while you're watching it.
Best in show is a tie between Bomo Illuma's segment, in which Jane meets an ex-lover named Tayo (Chido Nwokocha) on a beach where, ten years earlier, it became painfully apparent that racial and cultural differences (she's white, he's Black) were fated to prevent them from going the distance; and Jeong's segment, which reunites Jacobs with "Community" castmate Joel McHale as another of Jane's former flames. Illuma's deployment of different textures, colors, and lighting schemes to contrast past and present evokes the work of Barry Jenkins, and it's remarkable.
Overall, The Seven Faces of Jane is a film that is not for everyone, but for those who are willing to take a chance on something different and experimental, it is worth watching. It's a film that will make you feel a wide range of emotions and leave you with a lot to think about. It's not a perfect film, but it's one that will stay with you long after you've seen it.
