We are hardly ever the same person on a day-to-day basis. Sure, we might have the same body or the same identity, but the events of our lives mold and shape us in a multitude of ways, and we could see the world a whole different way over the course of 24 or 48 hours. As such, cinema is an expressive medium, but there hasn’t been a film quite like The Seven Faces of Jane, a daring exquisite corpse project that sees eight different filmmakers exploring the journey of our titular character, a wandering soul who finds herself warped throughout the course of surreal, life-altering events. To represent such a modifying life, Jane’s story is told through the lens of a variety of storytellers — all of whom have a different vision for what could or should become of this woman. As this first trailer shows, it results in a dazzling experience.
Our titular protagonist, played by Gillian Jacobs, who also directs a scene, discovers herself driving away from the uninteresting existence she formerly had into an exhilarating and life-changing voyage on the road. Each director “just had to follow by a few restrictions, meaning spectators got to watch Jane interpreted in eight distinct cinematic languages, her existence mediated by eight different brains,” according to the synopsis for the movie. Each director adopts a style and tone that is completely unique from the other, as can be seen in this teaser. While this may easily lead to catastrophe, that is both the beauty and peril of producing a movie like this.
An exquisite corpse is a technique for collectively producing art that was created by the French Surrealists. Each person puts together a different random piece of the puzzle to form the whole. Cinema is such a visceral and collaborative art form that it undoubtedly lends itself to such a disparate-yet-connecting vision, even if it is generally employed in other art forms, such as writing. The Seven Faces of Jane should ideally turn out to be a gripping, engaging, and unique movie, especially in relation to the development of our main character, under the assured, vulnerable direction of Jacobs, who has demonstrated her flexibility across a number of movies.
