‘Carol’ screenwriter Nagy directs the story of a suburban woman’s involvement in the Jane Collective, an underground service that provided safe abortions in the years before Roe v.

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Sigourney Weaver, Chris Messina, Kate Mara, Wunmi Mosaku, Cory Michael Smith, Grace Edwards, John Magaro.

Screenwriters: Hayley Schore, Roshan Sethi.

But drama usually requires a protagonist, and the screenplay by Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi gives us a compelling one in Joy, with Banks delivering her most complex and stirring feature-film performance in years.

Though the screenplay might hit a point or two rather neatly on the head, Carol screenwriter Nagy, at the helm of her first theatrical film (she directed a starry cast in the 2005 true-crime TV movie Mrs. Harris), builds a subtle and affecting sense of time and place, with nods to ’70s indie filmmaking.

In the scenes that open the movie, Joy’s husband, Will (Chris Messina), is celebrating having been made a partner at his law firm.

But Nagy, Schore and Sethi acknowledge this, and the fact that the ban on abortion disproportionately affected women who are poor, Black or brown.

Matters of race and class burst to the surface of the film in a brief but charged debate between Gwen (Wunmi Mosaku), the Janes’ sole Black member, and Virginia (Sigourney Weaver), the group’s imperious and passionately dedicated leader.

And she finds purpose with the Janes, eventually becoming de facto assistant to Dean (Cory Michael Smith), the man who performs abortions for the group’s clients.

The director steps away from Joy’s POV for a beautifully played scene between Smith and Weaver, their characters negotiating a business deal over vodka shots.

As for the abortions themselves, Nagy and cinematographer Greta Zozula focus on the vulnerability, not to mention the metal instruments involved.

There’s a breathtaking moment when Joy, mid-procedure, having finally found a safe solution to her life-threatening predicament, blurts out to Dean, “I’m scared!” Keeping the film grounded in character, Nagy eloquently reminds us at every turn that what has been labeled a crime is a medical procedure, and underscores how personal all this is for the women

Messina taps into his character’s sensitivity as well as his cluelessness, and a couple of scenes between him and Mara’s sad-eyed Lana are heart-stopping portrayals of messy, fumbling decency and grace

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Sigourney Weaver, Chris Messina, Kate Mara, Wunmi Mosaku, Cory Michael Smith, Grace Edwards, John Magaro

Screenwriters: Hayley Schore, Roshan Sethi

Executive producers: Christelle Conan, Peter Touche, Erica Kahn, Judy Bart, Chris Triana, Randal B

Sadler, Iris Smith, Tai Lopez, Lisa D'Ambrosio, Gretchen Sisson, Patricia Lawley, Amanda Kiely, Hayley Schore, Roshan Sethi, Joe Simpson, Leal Naim, Thomas Burke, Jeff Rice, Joseph Lanius, Jeffrey Hecktman, Michelle Campbell Mason, Colby Cote, Jeff Kwatinetz