"I'm Your Woman" is a few notches better than your average crime thriller but a few notches below true greatness.
Director Julia Hart, who recently made the Disney+ YA adaptation "Stargirl," builds upon the potential she showed in 2018's "Fast Color" to create a suspenseful character study that subverts your expectations of a 1970s crime drama.
Her leading lady this time is Rachel Brosnahan, best known for the Amazon series "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." At times, I kept getting Brosnahan confused with actress Evan Rachel Wood. She looks and sounds a lot like her in this film.
She plays a young wife who is surprised one day when her husband unexpectedly shows up with a baby boy with no explanation, saying, "this is our baby." The audience is left in the dark. Shortly after, the husband disappears, again without explanation. We learn that he's been involved in some criminal activities, he's left her some money and now she must go into hiding with the baby and an African American man named Cal, played expertly by Arinzé Kene, a rather unknown actor.
What proceeds is part character study, but suspenseful crime thriller. It's not overly violent or action packed. It's a slow burn with long stretches of silence but there are a few scenes that are quite excellent. And the audience doesn't know what to expect next.
The chemistry between Brosnahan and Kene is top notch and the pace is very good.
Hart knows what she's doing with this sophisticated drama that never relies on cliches. There are themes of motherhood and femininity rolled into this refreshingly realistic narrative. The slow pace pays off in the end and the movie gets better as the time clicks on.
While I have a lot of good things to say about "I'm Your Woman," it never quite reaches the stratosphere of greatness. I'd rank it somewhere between "pretty good" and "really good." It is glacially paced and that can turn off some. I didn't mind the pacing but probably wouldn't watch this one a second time.