Adorned with sunglasses and in a pink fur-trimmed robe, Jean (Rachel Brosnahan) sits reclined on her patio chair as she sips champagne. Bobbie Gentry’s “I Wouldn’t Be Surprised” — one of the film’s many soulful needle drops — fills the ears. Jean doesn’t worry about much. The chic woman lives in a contemporary suburban home with her husband Eddie (Bill Heck), where her gravest trouble, in the opening minutes, is finding a pair of scissors to cut the price tag from her robe. But her outwardly idyllic life changes when Eddie surprisingly appears with an adopted baby.
In her role as a mother, she struggles: Her attempt at breakfast sees her preparing burnt toast and stiff eggs. She especially labors to calm her baby from crying. But soon, Jean’s life is upended. Eddie leaves and doesn’t come back. Instead, Eddie’s partner comes bursting through the door. Jean needs to leave. People are looking for Eddie. People are looking for her. See, Jean and Eddie are the type of couple who have $200k in cash hidden in their shoe boxes just in case. Their life is built on illicit money. Eddie is a thief.
Though Jean and her baby Harry are given to Eddie’s associate Cal (Arinzé Kene) and whisked to a safe house, she’s far from safe. In her journey, not only must she confront the truth about Eddie, but she needs to discover a semblance of independence. Set in the 1970s, with “I’m Your Woman,” director Julia Hart crafts a thrilling picture that thoughtfully repurposes the usually male-dominated crime genre into an equally entertaining woman-fronted narrative about motherhood and autonomy.
“I’m Your Woman” borrows its title from Tuesday Weld’s line “I’m your woman and you’re my man” in Michael Mann’s 1981 thriller “Thief.” Similar to James Caan’s character in that film, Jean has a void: She wants a family. By reimagining the phrase from a woman’s perspective, Hart turns the confident line into one of insecurity. Can Jean be her own person apart from Eddie? Can she be a good mother? A self-professed terrible cook, she’s left by Cal, alone with her baby, at the safehouse. While she awaits Eddie’s fate, Cal gives her one rule for her sojourn: Do not talk to anyone.
Hart patiently reels us into this world. She slowly peels back the mysteries. But she also confounds us in a violent moral ambiguity. Rachel Brosnahan — the star of the comedy series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” — holds together a tightly wound narrative that still finds time to luxuriate in Jean’s struggle with motherhood. Whether it’s the weary nights brought on by Harry’s crying, or the evening stroller walks through the dark neighborhood, Jean buckles under the day-to-day strain.
The film’s indulgences also translate to its look. From Natalie O’Brien’s retro yet lively costumes, to the period drama’s exacting production design and set decoration, to Bryce Fortner’s tough cinematography — whose low-key lighting often evokes Gordon Willis’ 70s work — every frame of Hart’s crime drama is sumptuously crafted so the wide lens might happily consume the splendor. Even so, Hart can linger for too long. Though the safe-house sequence ends with a bang, combing Jean’s exhaustion with her paranoia gives the arc more than it can chew. The narrative, much like Jean, becomes stuck in neutral. And while that’s the intention, the effect feels too leaned into.
“I’m Your Woman” does pick back up when Jean joins Cal’s family — his wife Teri (Marsha Stephanie Blake, with a gripping performance), his son Paul (Da’Mauri Parks), and his father Art (Frankie Faison) — at his cabin. Here, Hart does some wonderful work building-out her characters. For instance, Jean begins to fill-out from a woman frozen by fear to increasingly active. She wants answers. Hart’s ability to craft women characters, Black or white, is impressive. Take her film “Fast Color,” which follows three generations of Black women with superpowers. Hart, and her husband and co-writer Jordan Horowitz, not only built-out a smart mythology, but they also tapped into the history of governmental forces using African-American bodies as fuel to cull agriculture. In “I’m Your Woman,” Hart and Horowitz incisively spotlight Jean’s white female privilege.
For instance, Jean is oblivious to the violence ensuing far from the confines of her fashionable suburban home. She’s surrounded by vicious men yet she has never used a gun. On the other hand, Teri lives in the gritty rough city, in an apartment building. She navigates an underworld, one Jean conveniently ignored for years, with ease. And when Jean falsely equates her struggle as a white woman to Teri’s as a Black woman, the latter verbally backhands such notions away. Teri didn’t arrive at the cabin to be Jean’s magical Black best friend. She arrived because she’s capable. And to that end, Stephanie Blake, who previously impressed in “Luce” and “When They See Us,” is brilliant here, too.
Hart fashions heartfelt bonds between these characters. In Cal’s family, Jean sees a tenderness she dreamed of but strained to find with Eddie. Fond segments see Cal and Art caring for Harry. But most of all, Teri and Jean see eye-to-eye as mothers protecting their respective child. Teri instills confidence in Jean, and the new mother is made courageously independent, causing the pair to embark into the seedy underworld. The family scenes are some unconventional digressions for a crime drama, but these small, deliberate steps, make the payoff so worth it. In fact, the final act features more than a few unforgettable scenes.
One awe-inspiring image involves a club that descends into a maddening stampede out into the street. Hart used hundreds of extras for this moment, and it’s so refreshing to see a large-scale cinematic sequence, replete with a crane taking in the multitudes, populated with real people. The energy they bring, a delicious danger, is just different. The final act also features bits of catharsis. Consider Jean sitting rain-soaked in a laundromat. One can’t tell if she’s on the verge of laughing or crying, yet her yowl extinguishes any doubt. Brosnahan is staggering in this slow-burning thriller. And others still, such as a car crash, inhale brutality in one breath, and exhale tenderness with another.
Hart found fresh angles in “Fast Color,” and she’s done the same with “I’m Your Woman.” This is a wickedly entertaining film down to the last minute. It’s wonderfully acted and suitably crafted. But most of all, a quiet strength rings from its gritty frames. “I’m Your Woman” is a stunner that will take you to unconventional places, if you have the patience to let it sweep you up in its quiet visceral moments. [B+]
“I’m Your Woman” opens in select theaters on December 4 and on Amazon Prime Video on December 11.