IFC Films
Historical espionage is a tricky subject, because by definition it’s a hidden enterprise. But there are a few known famous spies throughout history, such as the WWI spy Mata Hari. She pretended to be Javanese and changed her name to sound exotic (not atypical at the time), although she was actually Dutch. But there were spies that were actually Indian, including some you may never have heard of at all.
A Call to Spy comes from director Lydia Dean Pilcher and writer Sarah Megan Thomas, who also stars as real life spy Virginia Hall. The movie takes place in WWII prior to the invasion of Britain, when the Nazis had begun to occupy French territory. We follow a new spy agency called the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which was intended to train spies and assist in learning everything they could about the enemy.
The French division, led by Maurice Buckmaster (Linus Roache) and his assistant Vera Atkins (Stana Katic), who also becomes an intelligence officer. Vera offers the idea of training women to be spies, as they were potentially easier to move around without suspicion. She identifies two people in particular (in reality she had more but the movie focuses on two), Virginia Hall and Noor Inayat Khan (Radhia Apte). Virginia is American but has been rejected to become a diplomat due to her wooden leg, and Noor is an Indian Muslim pacifist but an excellent signals operator.
After a few short training bits, we see the ladies sent into action in France, while also getting a bit more context back in the UK, as Vera feels (most likely correctly) that she is being held back and punished for being Jewish. Naturally, she also keenly connects with the capture and murder of Jews in Nazi occupied Europe, although this is shown mostly through subtler moments.
In the meantime, Noor moves from place to place, trying to stay ahead of the enemy tracking her radio signals while sending back vital information. Virginia is the one on the ground, connecting with local asset Dr. Chevain (Rossif Sutherland), and trying to avoid capture while keeping Noor safe and getting information of the enemy of her own.
Of course, this is a spy movie, and things must go wrong — which is also what happened in real life, although there are some controversies that the movie doesn’t really address. But that aside, there is often a bit of unusual pacing in the movie, cutting back and forth between the ladies, to a point where sometimes it’s hard to get a sense of how much time has passed or what exactly has happened.
For a spy movie, it’s not a very complicated plot, really just about people in very dangerous places trying to stay ahead of the enemy. No triple crossing, no monologues, no ‘this will end the war’ stuff — but as it’s based on real life, that makes sense. Overall, the movie builds its tension very well, and when things go wrong, you hope somehow that history was wrong this one time.
The cast is strong here, with Stana Katic offering some depth to her complicated character, a somewhat dodgy British accent aside, while Sarah Megan Thomas and Radhika Apte show us depths of bravery and concern when needed, helping us to empathize and connect with their real life characters. Honestly, I didn’t know about any of these women before I saw the movie, which led me down a bit of a Wikipedia research rabbithole, and sometimes with a movie like this, that’s the best compliment I can offer: It made me want to know more.
A Call to Spy has a run time of 2 hours 3 minutes and is rated PG-13 for some strong violence, disturbing images, language, and smoking.
IFC Films
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