This is a really interesting script. I've also seen the movie which hews quite closely to the script, directed by Julia Hart who co-wrote the script with Jordan Horowitz.

I actually read the script after I saw the movie (it's on Amazon Prime and I recommend it) and I was interested to see how two dynamics played on the page compared to the script.

The first thing is how the story subverts expectations. If you simply consider the action in Act Two Part B and Act Three, all the car chases, gunfire, and bloodshed, you would likely think this is a crime thriller. However, I feel it's more of a DRAMA-thriller. That is because there are significant stretches in which two (or more) characters engage in what I call 'interaction scenes.' These may involve arguments and heightened conflict, but often they are about characters getting to know each other, a character revealing something about their inner life to another character, and the like. And I'm Your Woman features several of these scenes, more than just a crime thriller's obligatory down time scenes between action. This has the effect of intensifying the action, the juxtaposition of soft and loud, human and inhumane.

That raises the second thing: Do we believe that the Protagonist (Jean), a sheltered woman who barely knows anything about her husband Eddie's criminal life, plus, a new parent due to Eddie's surprise 'gift' of a baby (Jean is unable to bear a child). Her character's transformation into who she becomes by the end of the story - outwitting hardened criminals, suffering painful injuries, but persisting nonetheless, facing death after death - is a remarkable arc.

There is a key scene (23-26) which speaks volumes about this point. She and Cal, her handler, who is Black, are stopped by a cop. He is immediately suspicious of a white woman with a baby traveling with a Black man. Just as things look like they will get out of hand - a possible arrest - Jean concocts an elaborate lie which convinces the cop to let them be. In the car afterward, Jean says this: "I didn’t know I could lie like

that."

This little moment stretches Jean beyond her normal way of being, tapping into a potential she has inside to do what needs to be done to survive. Where she goes in her psychological journey is much further than this, but this is a starting point - right at the end of Act One. She journeys into the New World armed with new insight into who she is ... and who she is to become.

In the end, I *do* buy Jean's character metamorphosis, deftly handled in the script and movie. I look forward to exploring I'm Your Woman this week ... and encourage you to join me by reading the script and sharing your reactions.