by Christine Westwood
Mobster wife Jean (Rachel Brosnahan) barely knows how to cook an egg, so when she finds herself in possession of a loaded pistol, both she and the audience are very nervous indeed.
In fact, Jean barely knows much about anything, including her husband Eddie’s criminal career, or where the baby he appears with out of the blue has come from. Eddie simply drops the child on her like a surprise gift – his ‘quick fix’ way of making up for her being unable to have a child of her own.
Brosnahan is best known for her Golden Globe performance as housewife turned comedienne in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. In I’m Your Woman, she brings the same precision and nervous energy to a mesmerising role that has her onscreen for practically every frame of this unique thriller. It’s as though she was directed to play Jean with the same focussed concentration as a newly wakened baby trying to figure out what the hell is going on, just like the actual baby she carries around as she is pursued by Eddie’s betrayed cronies.
Whatever the director’s strategy, it makes for a performance so oddly poignant and finally riveting, you can’t turn away.
That director is Julia Hart, who co-wrote the screenplay with partner Jordan Horowitz. Hart’s previous efforts include the quirky Disney production Stargirl (2020), Fast Color (2018), a thriller featuring a young woman (Saniyya Sidney), who goes on the run to hide her superhuman abilities – connecting with her female ancestors who form a powerful matrilineal line. Cast with all black actresses, it’s a great twist on the superhero genre.
In an interview with Filmmaker, Hart explains how she took the directorial chair for her second screenplay Miss Stevens (2016), starring Timothee Chalamet and Lili Reinhart in early roles. “I definitely had not given myself permission to be a director when I started to write. I was a teacher for eight years and then I quit to be a screenwriter… Someone else was originally attached to direct Miss Stevens. And then I watched a film get made of the first screenplay I had written (The Keeping Room) and I was suddenly very ashamed of myself.
“I realised that there are far too few female stories and far too few female storytellers for me to let someone else tell my story. It was being on that set that inspired me to direct Miss Stevens myself. As women, we are socialised to not seek out roles of power. I am embarrassed that I fell prey to that myself and I won’t let it happen again. Once I gave myself that permission, there was no more fear.
“There are so few female stories and so few female storytellers that we need to shout it from the rooftops when one comes along. Maybe someday there will be an equal amount of female directors to male directors, but until that day comes we need to call it out. It needs to be reaffirmed that THIS MOVIE WAS MADE BY A WOMAN. So that we begin to normalise it.”
I’m Your Woman certainly has a unique female voice. There are details of Jean’s coping with the care of a restless baby while being on the run; and her gradual awakening from her disempowered status as the dumb wife who takes what her husband tells her at face value.
The set design by Gary Kosko, who worked on projects as diverse as A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood and Interstellar, is superb. The era is the 1970s and the beautifully lit scenes make the most of the contemporary colour palette and textures, not least in Jean’s wardrobe. Her clothes reflect and counterpoint her evolving journey, from the first scene where she is in a gaudy tulle outfit obviously gifted by her husband – so new that the tags are still on. Then there’s a glitter and fur disco outfit before a shift to ‘back to the land’ knits and jeans.
As demonstrated in Fast Color, Hart casts strong support actors, like Marsha Stephanie Blake as Terri, the black woman whose life mirrors Jean’s own and who becomes an unlikely ally. And a shout out must go to the casting of the three infant actors who play baby Harry. It’s rare to see a pre-verbal child given as much screen presence as the adults, yet in real life babies’ personalities are often pivotal, not peripheral. Hart uses Harry’s vulnerability, adaptability and struggle to make sense of the crazy world around him as a funny, moving counterpoint to Jean’s own evolution to female strength and awakening.
I’m Your Woman streams on Prime Video from December 11, 2020
