‘A Call to Spy’ Review: A Sturdy Drama About WWII’s Overlooked Female Spies

As Nazi forces pushed ever closer to England in the summer of 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill had a wild idea: a new spy agency, the Special Operations Executive (known as the Soe), to gather intel, and spark sabotage, in and around France.

That scheme might sound obvious on paper, but the Soe went decidedly outside the box when it came to not only its methodology, but also the people tasked with carrying it out: They included more than three dozen women.

Lydia Dean Pilcher’s “A Call to Spy” follows three of those women, and while the shape ofPilcher, best known for her producing work (including an Oscar nod for the documentary “Cutie and the Boxer”), appears intent on carving a niche in directing overlooked historical tales about fierce, real-life women.

Later this year, her directorial debut “Radium Girls,” about a group of ’20s-era factory workers who advocated for safer conditions,

Read full article