Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Soapy script reduces Reddy’s roar to whisper
(M, 116mins)
Directed by Unjoo Moon ★★★
Reviewed by
WJames Croot
hen Australian singer Helen Reddy (Tilda CobhamHervey) first arrived in New York in 1966, she dreamed of becoming an overnight sensation. It would take her five years to record her debut album.
With three-year-old daughter Traci in tow, the divorcee had ditched a successful antipodean radio career, after winning an Australian Bandstand contest. Reddy thought that entitled her to a recording contract, but Mercury Records almost instantly disavowed her of that belief. ‘‘You sing very nicely, but male groups are all the rage, we just couldn’t get you airplay,’’ an executive tells her.
Deflated but determined, Reddy resorts to taking gigs in half-empty clubs, where she’s being paid less than the band (partly because of her immigration status), while living in a dump of a hotel so dirty Traci has given all the cockroaches names.
But then along comes someone who totally believes in her – and her talent. Agent Jeff Wald (American Horror Story regular Evan Peters) is besotted with Reddy and her voice and promises that ‘‘if you be the show – I’ll be the business’’.
So, after he’s let go by William Morris, he persuades her that relocating to Los Angeles would be good for them both and Traci. However, after years of frustration, it’s only thanks to her insistence and persistence that Capital Records decide to give Reddy a shot – a chance to record an album of covers. There’s one original song though that she’s desperate to make the cut, even if the execs label it ‘‘kind of angry’’ and ‘‘manhating’’.
Yes, as the film’s title suggests, Unjoo Moon’s feature debut is all about the genesis and legacy of Reddy’s 1972 ‘‘empowerment anthem’’, with regular references made back to the progress (or lack thereof) of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution throughout this tale’s 22-year span (an American injustice/travesty told in far more interesting detail in the recent Mrs America series).
However, Emma Jensen’s linear (somewhat surprisingly for an entertainer biopic) screenplay actually focuses even more so on the intimate, than the larger cause.
At its heart, I Am Woman isa Jerry Maguire/A Star is Bornesque portrait of a couple struggling with the combined weight of their relationship and working together, while Reddy’s fracturing friendship with fellow Aussie and New York-based music journalist Lilian Roxon (Danielle McDonald) is straight out of the Muriel’s Wedding playbook.
In fact, overall, there’s a distinct sense of deja vu about this glossy but glib biopic. Even Reddy’s songs are often drowned out by Moon’s preference for period hits from other artists and Rafael May’s tinkly piano score, while characters are less-thanseamlessly inserted Forrest Grump-style into archival footage. So, by the time Wald is reduced to snorting cocaine off the carpet, everything has started to feel a little too soapy and I began to stop caring.
Which is shame, because to dismiss this would be to miss out on a fantastic performance from Cobham-Hervey.
A revelation in her 2014 debut 52 Tuesdays and the following year’s The Kettering Incident TV series, the South Australian actor here delivers an emotional and memorable turn that the sludgy script almost scarcely deserves.
She and a shorter running time are the only things that separate this from those blunt, banal B-grade Aussie biopic mini-series like Olivia NewtonJohn: Hopelessly Devoted to You and INXS: Never Tear Us
Apart.