101 films likely jumped for joy at seeing JANE available for them to licence. Look at the cast firstly, Madelaine Petsch, Melissa Leo and Chloe Bailey. 
Then the crew, director Sabrina Jaglom and writer Rishi Rajani among others. Finally the story itself. A prep school, with young people driven to be the best. Olivia (Petsch), is one of those. Mom and Dad see her as an academic dream come true. She is best of the best at everything. She wins cups, she applies to Stanford. She is all she can be. Really? There is a thin line between value and invalid. Hence why there is an explosion of mental health issues in young people. When she is about to ber replaced on the debate team, the reality of pressure and stress, coupled with the recent loss of a friend, Olivia life is unravelling. Fast. She goes where any young person would. The internet isnt just a world of things. Its a world of rage, false reality and a venting space, where the spleen is mean and picked clean.
JANE gets to the heart of the issue rapidly. Unsettling the score by asking that most difficult of questions, can we stop for anything? Here berevement, elsewhere the demands of making money, mostly for richer people.
The clever strokes are with the comment on deferred expectations and as her dream college pushes her back, it becomes a catalyst for horrible reals to surface. Spiralling and self destructive emotions are tempered with a series of frightening panic attacks. We care about Olivia because she is using a safe space, her ethe internet, to vent. When she embarks on a social media-fueled rampage, it is unpleasent to watch, but not unexpected. JANE delivers because it humanises and rationalises. When it feels like its misstepping, it is reigned in. When it runs slow, it still has applied pressure, interestingly, Olivia applys it. Our main character could be a mess or a messy monster. JANE is a film that might be a little over wired and, in its completion, a little unbalanced but it is certainly a great find for those looking for a fresh take on the ills of social media….
