As Midge in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, her Emmy-winning role, Rachel Brosnahan is all brass and moxie; when her husband turns out to be a royal jerk, she chucks him out and starts a new life on her own. But in I’m Your Woman, written and directed by Julia Hart and released to theaters and Amazon Prime this weekend, Brosnahan’s Jean is quietly passive. In one scene, she is gifted a baby out of the blue by her husband and she seems to meekly accept it, no questions asked.

Not that Jean’s not a compelling character; she just has a longer journey to get to anything close to the strength that Midge starts out with. Set in Pittsburgh in the harvest gold and burnt orange-hued 1970s, Jean is the stay-at-home wife of Eddie, who is plainly some sort of criminal but neither Jean nor the story spend a lot of time exploring what those crimes may be.

Soon after the incident where Eddie plops the mystery infant into Jean’s lap, he disappears and Jean is forced by one of her husband’s henchman to run, with no more than the baby and a large sack of money. No one is answering Jean’s questions (or ours) yet; Jean is hustled to a new location to live on her own (with baby Harry) for who knows how long.

Jean’s guide to this new life is Cal, played by the Nigerian-born actor Arinzé Kene. Cal divulges little, but he and Jean have an amazing rapport and their friendship is one of high points of the film.

Jean soon makes a fatal error jeopardizing her safety so that she and Cal must make a run for it, this time with Cal’s family. Cal’s wife Teri (Marsha Stephanie Blake, Orange is the New Black) is more in-the-know about her husband’s business, and she gradually fills Jean in on (nearly) everything Eddie never told her.

Jean and Teri team up when Cal is in trouble, and the two forge a bond that is understated and powerful. Teri’s presence drives Jean to grow, though in a less cliché sense than many movies do when teaming up Black and white characters. Teri is just as integral to the story as Jean.

In the end, the friendship between Teri and Jean and the bonds of family are more important than the crime-story backdrop. The movie has a slow, measured pace, with some action and suspense, but the main joy of this film is in the performances.