![]() Blake, in particular, gives the film’s standout performance as the steady yet assertive spouse, and the interactions between Jean and the black family she finds herself in the care of are beautifully complex, without ever resorting to using them as props for yet another white character’s personal journey. We’re introduced to Cal’s family, including his wife Teri (Marsha Stephanie Blake), his son Paul (De’Mauri Parks), and his father Art (Frankie Faison). ) But once more of Jean’s backstory becomes apparent and we get a less opaque window into her psyche, things start to pick up steam. (Like, for example, Brosnahan’s own comedy The Marvelous Mrs. The downside is that this makes for a bleak, repetitive, and sometimes agonizingly sluggish first half of the film, which isn’t helped by the run-of-the-mill crime thriller dialogue - think men waving guns in Jean’s face, yelling, “Don’t lie to us!” - nor the “creamy” digital film colors and textures characteristic of every other period movie or TV show on a streaming service right now. And when she dares to invite a kind stranger into her current safehouse, the consequences are horrific. Her husband never even let her drive a car, she says. They flee with the help of Cal (Arinzé Kene), an old partner of Eddie’s, and while Jean spends plenty of time protesting her new, spartan lifestyle, hiding out in motel after roadside motel, the movie makes clear that Jean is not used to making her own decisions. Soon after, she and the child are forced to go on the run - Eddie got on someone’s bad side, though who or how is unclear, and now they’re seeking revenge. But she blankly adopts him and names him Harry. The first we see of Eddie is when he brings Jean home a baby where the infant came from, we don’t know. ![]() Instead, Jean is entitled to the point of annoyance, and she acquiesces to her thieving husband’s commands. It would have been straightforward (and lazy) to give us a whipsmart feminist heroine with punchy, patriarchy-smashing zingers. To Hart and her co-screenwriter Jordan Horowitz’s credit, I’m Your Woman doesn’t give it to us that easy. The subversive premise here is simple: What if this female archetype was not only the protagonist, but the recipient of our sympathies as well? (Or, if you prefer your killjoy spouses on the small screen, Anna Gunn in Breaking Bad.) These characters are often the objects of both lust and scorn from the audience, either because they drag the male protagonist down further into the depths of immorality or are hen-pecking him so much that he can’t live out a machismo crime fantasy with his boys. ![]() Nevertheless, she’s eager to tear that tag off.įrom its opening scenes, writer-director Julia Hart’s I’m Your Woman ( streaming on Amazon starting December 11th) immediately places its lead character as the latest in a long line of crime-drama wives and girlfriends, from the classic film noir queens like Barbara Stanwyck to the Nineties mob wives brought to life by Lorraine Bracco. We’re given hints to the exact nature of Jean’s domestic life: Her husband Eddie (Bill Heck) leaves her alone at home throughout the day, his life of crime largely a mystery to her other than its existence the couple wanted to have kids, “but then they didn’t” her lush gown still carries a tag attached to it, suggesting it was stolen - a detail Jean doesn’t seem too surprised by when she discovers it. ![]() Staring out behind geometric sunglasses, she rests on a lawn chair in a sheer magenta robe, cigarette in hand, the epitome of the young, begrudging Seventies housewife and the stuff Lana Del Rey videos are made of. Jean ( Rachel Brosnahan) is sullen and vacant.
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