I Am Woman is a biographical feature about the 1970s recording superstar Helen Reddy, whose hit song "I Am Woman" became an unofficial anthem for the Women's Movement. Anyone alive at that time remembers how the anthem resonated with mobilized women seeking gender equality, the end of barriers to power-sharing and career advancement, and self-determination over health and reproductive freedom. The film begins just as Helen (an excellent Tilda Cobham Hervey), a single mother and unknown in the music industry, arrives in New York from her native Australia on a shaky promise she'd make her first record. When that falls through, she's stuck in town and has to fend for herself.
Taking a low-paying gig as a small nightclub singer, Helen encounters sexism when male members of the band make more than she does as the frontwoman. Eventually, Helen meets Jeff Wald (Evan Peters), whom she marries and goads into becoming her manager. From there, I Am Woman follows the familiar course of showbiz movies about a struggle for success, then a struggle with success, then a struggle with the passing of success. Older viewers might recall the real-life Wald as a coke-fueled jerk reportedly and repeatedly throwing his weight around wherever he went. That's what we get here as Wald bullies everyone and ignores his wife's needs, at one point forcing her to fulfill a concert commitment the day her best friend is buried.
Director Unjoo Moon isn't trying to scale great heights here, but rather takes a kind of straightforward, non-challenging, Lifetime cable channel approach to the familiar story. What keeps it all interesting is the two leads, who bring a lot of good chemistry to the many contradictory dimensions of a marital-managerial relationship made more complicated by Wald's addictions. Strongly recommended.