Teenage suicide and cyber-bullying. Handle these tough subjects in a way that is crass or exploitative, and your film will leave a bad taste in the mouth. Handle it with delicacy and nuance and you might produce something impressive. Sabrina Jaglom’s Jane falls into the latter category, approaching these topics with compassion and honesty by conveying confusion and stress with suggestions of something uncanny as well as a frank and bold approach to its characters.
The titular Jane (Chloe Yu) of the film dies at the very start, yet her shadow (or should that be a ghost?) hangs over the entire film, as the students at her exclusive Los Angeles private school struggle with the impact of her suicide. The central struggle is that of Olivia (Madelaine Petsch), one of Jane’s closest friends whose grief exacerbates and compounds her stress over grades and desperation to get into Stanford University. In this way, the film echoes other high school dramas such as Easy A and Booksmart, but with one crucial difference. Jane is not a comedy; indeed, it rapidly becomes tragic and even horrific as events escalate and spiral out of control.
Olivia’s tightly wound ambition is directly expressed by her participation in debating contests, and when new student and national contest veteran Camille (Nina Bloomgarden) threatens Olivia’s standing, she becomes desperate to maintain control as she could not over Jane’s death or indeed her own college application. In her attempts to bring Camille down, Olivia and her friend Izzy (Chloe Bailey) turn to a particular form of cyberbullying that invokes Jane’s memory in disturbing ways. As might be expected, things get out of hand.
If you thought the Plastics of Mean Girls were spiteful, this is a whole other level. But the film still invokes empathy for the girls by highlighting their stressed-out states and lack of coping mechanisms.
A bold choice of the director here is to make the central characters pretty despicable. The cruelty of Olivia and Izzy is presented unapologetically, and while they admit much of what they do is ‘fucked up’ and start to have doubts and regrets, there is a disturbing commitment to their nasty work. If you thought the Plastics of Mean Girls were spiteful, this is a whole other level. But the film still invokes empathy for the girls by highlighting their stressed-out states and lack of coping mechanisms. This is somewhat ironic when their school faculty is regularly encouraging students to speak to teachers and counsellors, and the private school itself is indicative of significant privilege. Both Izzy and Olivia are from wealthy families, further evidenced by the grand houses they reside in, complete with swimming pools, not to mention nice cars, clothes, phones, laptops and more. They could easily have been hateful and vile creations, teenage girl versions of the leads in The Social Network or The Wolf of Wall Street, but (despite the ages of the actors) this is a plausible vision of teenagers who do not appreciate the extent of their actions. The viewer might condemn Olivia and Izzy, but at no point are we not aligned with them. This may alienate
some viewers who simply find their behaviour unacceptable, but Jaglom uses prolonged scenes and close-ups to convey the predicaments of the girls, inviting the viewer to see these events and predicaments alongside Izzy and Olivia, if we are open to that.
Many of these close-ups linger on Petsch’s face, sometimes tremulous and other times intense. The human face can work as a cinematic landscape in its own right, and Jaglom, along with director of photography Diana Matos, ensures that we see the grief, distress and resolve writ large across Olivia’s features. Petsch plays the role largely bottled up, Olivia unable to truly express herself even when her veneer cracks and leaks in the form of tears. For all the opportunities afforded to her, Olivia always strives to be more, to be perfect (and not because of home pressure, the few scenes featuring her parents present them as laid back and supportive), and to be an ideal of herself. It is an understandable pressure experienced by young people, especially high-achieving young women. Jane’s suicide, a hard-to-understand choice in any event, works as a further motivation for Olivia’s mental state, as her tone, movements and body language often suggest fear – she fears that what happened to Jane could just as easily happen to her, thus she pushes herself ever harder and grabs control of the narrative through social media. This fear threatens to consume her, especially as hallucinations (or are they?) of Jane haunt Olivia with increasing frequency, further demonstrating the loss of control both within and beyond herself.
In its portrayal of privilege, the film makes some interesting and potentially problematic choices. We are shown that Jane, Olivia and Izzy were best friends, but notably, Olivia is the only white girl, with Jane being Asian American and Izzy African American. While race is never made an issue in the film, the final act is disturbing in the hierarchy of its racial politics. This is not necessarily a criticism, however, because other references are made to how controversies work out and the eventual resolution and final moments are appropriately chilling. In some respects, Jane could be considered a teen drama. In other ways, it would be fitting to describe it as a psychological teen horror.
JANE is out now on Digital Platforms courtesy of 101 Films
