20th May, 2024
I Am Woman
Cast: Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Danielle Macdonald, Evan Peters
Directed By: Unjoon Moon
On the backdrop of the women’s movement hang a million little stories as bright as the stars in a clear night sky. Stories that changed, pushed, gave momentum to, spearheaded, and wove the exquisitely painful yet beautiful tapestry that is the fight for equal rights. Superstar vocalist Helen Reddy is one such story. And ‘I Am Woman’ is the movie that has chosen to tell it today.
Let me begin by saying that music movies are my indulgence and I devour them ad nauseam. So for me, this one falls on the pleasant, one-time-watch side of the scale. Maybe it’s because, the film at times does feel like a highlight reel of Helen’s setbacks and accomplishments without really addressing the dilemmas that shaped her. And while Emma Jensen’s script falls short in a few places and it feels like director Unjoo Moon seems to have left out some very poignant parts of Helen Reddy’s 2006 The Woman I Am: A Memoir; one can’t help but see the connect between the story and the issues that have pounded their way back into social conversation.
The movie pulls you into Helen’s story right from her walk through the New York subway to catch a train with her young daughter Traci. You can’t help but see the subway wall that has an advertisement with a woman holding a ketchup bottle, saying, “Even I can open it”. And bang. There you have it. A punch in the gut that says things are stacked overwhelmingly against our lead. And we’re constantly thrown small and big punches throughout the film that at time’s make us wonder, “Did Helen really make it?”
Hats off to Nikki Barrett for casting Tilda Cobham-Hervey as Helen Reddy. She is savvy and astute in her performance and plays the role with equal parts right indignation, warmth, fear of the unknown, and a readiness to conquer it all. One cannot deny the magnetism that is Danielle Macdonald as Lillian Roxon, who published the first rock encyclopedia in ‘69 or the oddly familiar, full of promises character of Helen’s second husband Jeff Wald played by Evan Peters.
This is a movie that thankfully doesn’t take away from the music that had us all falling in love with Helen in the first place. We get to hear Helen’s signature tone through Chelsea Cullen’s dubbed voice and the full tracks rather than short versions often played in movies like these.
From the serendipitous recording of her first song I Don’t Know How To Love Him (Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’) to the first time she sings I Am Woman and the reactions it garners in the club, and then the tear-jerking performance the last time she sings it (in the film) at the 1989 Women’s Rally, to the had-to-happen tune of You and Me Against the World and many others, you realise why Alice Cooper called her the “Queen of Housewife Rock”.
Though the scenes in the film seem to be set up for the music rather than the other way round, the singularity of her songs are brought to life through the lush veneer of Dion Beebe’s slick cinematography and Dany Cooper’s superb editing. From the sublime 60s to the hedonistic 80s, costume designer Emily Seresin’s debonair designs and Michael Turner’s production design bring it all together.
For those that have lived through and know Helen Reddy’s story, there are unexplored puddles that are bound to make your ankles wet and angry. And yet, for those just hearing her story and her music, there is a certain joie de vivre present in the film that a single mom could travel so far and struggle and still strike big. There is an optimism that one cog can thrust a movement. There is a sense of exultation that one voice can compel and propel and dispel the darkness. There is the fact that ‘I Am Woman’ is a phrase that can be said by anyone and a song that can be sung by all. Of the many fictional scary movies out there, this true tale of struggle and triumph brings home a reality that is harrowing in its current relevance. It may be imperfect but it is empowering. And it leaves behind an open window that steals in a ray of much needed sunshine.
My Take: The struggle of being a woman is more real than you’d imagine.
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Rating: ***
Reviewed by Ayesha Dominica
A fiercely independent freelance writer, Ayesha Dominica has been published regularly since age 13 in community magazines and newsletters, including an international social justice magazine ‘The Axe’. Her 6 years at the Express Group saw her work published in most of the group’s newspapers and syndicated across a number of languages. When she's not intimidating strangers with her love for polysyllabic words, she works as an artist manager for DJ Russel and curates events. She is prone to withdrawal symptoms if distanced from her books and can also be easily distracted by the colour yellow.
