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Francesca Rudkin: Movie reviews - I Am Woman and Reunion

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Sat, 7 Nov 2020, 1:54pm
Tilda Cobham-Hervey as Australian singer Helen Reddy in the bio-pic I Am Woman. (Photo / Supplied)
Tilda Cobham-Hervey as Australian singer Helen Reddy in the bio-pic I Am Woman. (Photo / Supplied)

Francesca Rudkin: Movie reviews - I Am Woman and Reunion

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Sat, 7 Nov 2020, 1:54pm

I Am Woman

Tilda Cobham-Hervey plays Australian musician and activist icon Helen Reddy. In 1966 Reddy landed in New York with her three-year-old daughter, a suitcase and $230. Within weeks she was broke. Within five years she was a superstar, the first ever Australian Grammy Award winner, and an icon of the 1970s feminist movement.

Reunion

Ivy is packing up an expansive old Victorian home after the recent death of her in-laws. Her husband Jack, wheelchair bound from a stroke, haunts the halls moaning and muttering incoherently.

Ellie, Ivy’s estranged daughter, shows up at the front door. She has been away for years, teaching at university and now 6-months pregnant. Ellie says she has come back to be alone and finish a research book on the origins of medieval science. The mother and daughter’s initial awkward interactions gradually fall into the familiar dynamics of previous years.

But the old house conjures disturbing memories for Ellie who is haunted by the ghost of her dead sister Cara. Ellie grows more erratic and confused as Ivy tries to comfort her and contain Ellie’s increasingly strange behaviours. But Ellie’s anxiety over her baby, Cara, her guilty past and the supernatural curse on her unborn baby send her over the edge. In the end, Ellie discovers horrors from her past that she never expected.

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