Film Review: A Call To Spy

A Call to Spy

The Lady Spies of World War II

I’ve always said if you want to get something done, call a woman. Winston Churchill decided to try that after France fell to Nazi domination in 1941, and England was left alone to defend the English Channel and England itself. 

He started a new agency called Special Operations Executive (SOE), which would recruit and train pretty women as spies. Their jobs: sabotage, subversion and recruitment of Resistance fighters.

 

Actress Sarah Megan Thomas wrote and co-stars, and Lydia Dean Pilcher directs “A Call to Spy,” which concentrates on the fictionalized stories of three of the women who answered the call, even after being told they had only a 50% chance of survival.

Thomas plays American Virginia Hall, who applied to be a British diplomat but was turned down because she had a wooden leg from a hunting accident. Virginia is the most daring, willing to try most anything and determined to do anything necessary to further the cause of the Resistance.

Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte), born in Russia to an American mother and Indian father, is a gentle soul and a Sufi Muslim – a sect that she describes as “lovers of peace and truth.” 

Romanian Vera Atkins (Stana Katic is picked by section head Maurice Buckmaster (Linus Roache) to lead the group. She has her own problems: she’s not yet a British citizen, is mourning a lover reported “missing in action,” and must be careful to conceal her Jewish heritage. 

“A Call to Spy” has a properly dark and foreboding look. Most of it was filmed in and around Philadelphia – including the the home of the family that inspired “The Philadelphia Story,” used for the “stately home” where the spies were trained. Some of the scenes in 1940’s France were shot in Budapest. The whole was beautifully shot by cinematographers Robby Baumgartner (Philadelphia) and Miles Goodall (Budapest). 

Bravos also go to production designer Kim Jennings, costume designer Vanessa Porter and composer Lillie Rebecca McDonough.

“A Call to Spy” is a tense and disturbing film, wonderfully shot and acted. Though fictionalized, the three women were real spies, which leaves viewers to ponder what they would do in like circumstances.

"A Call to Spy" opens in select markets on October 2.