Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Lydia Dean Pilcher
Starring: Sarah Megan Thomas, Stana Katic, Radhika Apte, Linus
Roache
For all those whose cinematic female spy shenanigans jones has been left
hanging by Disney’s rescheduling of Black Widow, sneaking in from the shadows is real-life undercover drama
A Call to Spy. Written by and starring Sarah Megan Thomas, and directed by
Lydia Dean Pilcher, A Call to Spy tells the story of
female WWII spies - i.e., clever, able but otherwise ordinary citizens who
are pulled into the war effort by Churchill’s SOE initiative purely
because of the perceived unlikeliness of a person with a vagina being a
spook - who are initiated, trained and, eventually, left to sacrifice
themselves for the resistance.
This isn’t a spoiler: based upon the real lives of soldiers Virginia Hall
(Thomas) and Noor Inayat-Khan (Radhika Apte - the most beautiful
name I think I have ever typed), this is a story which abides to
historical accuracy and features barely trained people behind enemy lines
in Vichy France. Fatal outcomes are inevitable. As Hall is informed by her
superiors from their comfortable drawing room office, the chances of
surviving her mission is 50% at best...
One of said superiors is hero Vera Atkins, played here by
Stana Katic. Katic plays Atkins with a jaded, stiff upper lip
expression, and she always has a fag on, which is duly held at a sharp
angle. These Americans and Canadians putting on cut glass British accents,
along with the familiar iconography of war films, makes for some warm,
even campy, fun in A Call to Spy’s first half. There is rump-a-pump-a military music set to a training
montage, German officers who SHOUT every word, and, in the boardrooms,
upper-class signifiers of waistcoats, reserve and amber liquid in crystal
glasses.
This is a Sunday afternoon treasure trove of a film, as familiar and
comforting as warm bread. However, A Call to Spy’s narrative also incorporates an element of the global conflict that war
films of the ilk outlined above often overlook: the contribution and might
of the Indian army, and the support of the Muslim League. I mean, even
prick Churchill took this utterly vital input for granted when he refused
emergency food relief to 1943’s Bengali famine (will offer: ‘blood, toil,
tears and sweat’. Won’t offer: food to starving foreigners. Cue Gary
Oldman spitting and chewing scenery).
Although A Call to Spy cannot redress this representational
imbalance, it does retell the essential story of Noor Inayat-Khan, a
Russian/American Muslim whose dad was a leader of the Sufi Order.
Inayat-Khan was the first female wireless operator to be sent into
occupied France during the Second World War. Played by Apte, she is the
gravity and moral centre of Thomas and Pilcher’s film. And morality is
important when it comes to cinematic depictions of real-life conflict. Due
to the medium’s influence upon and involvement with World War II, from the
indispensable newsreel footage and the propaganda films of the very era to
how recurrent the World War II films have been in the ensuing decades,
within this symbiotic dynamic it is crucial that film makers do their best
to be honest and true with this material. I mean, we’ll allow things like
Tarantino for their fable-like idiosyncrasies (so magnanimous of me, I
know), but when a film is purporting to be based on the actuality of war
then there is an ethical imperative involved in the stories we tell
ourselves, portrayals which can and do shape our popular understanding of
what happened.
At the time of writing, the bloated Brexit white male rent-a-crowd are
currently swilling their lagers and swearing their dense, empty little
hearts out about how wearing a mask is an infringement of "ar civil
liberties." You know the ones, the thick as pigshit, scared little bullies
who weep about the imprisonment of "ar Tommy" (Robinson - not even his
real name hahahaha), hiding their lazy hatred and slothful sense of
entitlement behind bogus notions of nationalism and liberty (see the
twitter feed ‘imagine this was your dad’ for further information). You
fucking pieces of shit. What did you ever do? What have you ever done in
your life for your country, for the people you claim to be ‘protecting’
from fictional foreign threat? Nothing. Yet women like Inayat-Khan died so
you could mouth off in Trafalgar Square about how wearing a mask is "like
The Hunger Games" (I’m not making this up).
A Call to Spy is not necessarily a great film - the first
half is a little slow, and (although this pleased me greatly, it is surely
not intentional) at points the performances reminded me of Ben Willbond’s
peerless Captain in BBC’s Ghosts. However, it is a pretty good film, especially in the growing tensions
of the final act. Ultimately though, A Call to Spy is an
important film, existing to tell a story that should be reiterated and
remembered: that, yes, the war was fought on the beaches, but also in many
different and dangerous other ways, too, and by brave and diverse people.
An end credit informs us that one in three British spies sent to help the
French Resistance did not return home.
A Call to Spy is on Prime Video UK now.