With I am Your Woman, director Julia Hart indulges in her love for the typical 70s gangster film, but with a difference. It is a reimagination-of-sorts from the perspective of a moll (a gangster’s girlfriend). It is all about the mess men leave behind for the women to clean up.
Here, the men and their actions are deliberately and adeptly kept out of focus by Hart. All we see is the consequential sufferings of a gangster’s wife, who largely isn’t even aware of what’s happening around her.
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It’s not just the protagonist; even the viewer is kept in the dark. This might make the film a bit trying to watch on occasion.
Eddie (Bill Heck), who is into shady dealings, has a trophy wife, Jean (Rachel Brosnahan). One fine day, Eddie walks in with a baby and gives it to Jean as though it were a thoughtful gift.
She names him Harry. Another fine day, Eddie is out, and Jean is told she has to run for her life with Eddie’s ex-employee, Cal (Arinze Kene).
She is neither told about whom she is running from, nor the whereabouts of her husband. Add to this a demanding kid who wouldn’t let her sleep.
Though we aren’t told about the nature of the problem, we are aware of the intensity and the implications. We realise there is some action going on somewhere, but Hart chooses instead to turn her camera on characters who don’t get the spotlight often in such films.
That makes this a spin-off of a gangster movie with usually auxiliary characters turning into leads. This treatment can especially be seen in Jean’s scenes. Moments that might have just been an afterthought in a typical gangster flick take centrestage here.
There is a lot to talk about the incredible performances in this film. Rachel Brosnahan, who shot to fame as the witty stand-up comedian in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, is a borderline demure housewife in here.
Be it the opening scene where she gets fidgety about the price tag in her night robe or the one where she breaks down in the laundromat, Rachel gives it her all. It is well complemented by Arinzé Kene as Cal, who gets the second-meatiest role.
The problem is that the subversions and novel ideas are at times extremely subtle. A casual viewer might well overlook them.
But a lot is going on here for the discerning viewer. Be it the depiction of the racism of those times or the feminist undertones, I am Your Woman possesses a lot of layers if you can uncover them.