Pieces of a Woman, Kornél Mundruczó’s (Jupiter’s Moon, White God) venture co-starring Vanessa Kirby (Mission Impossible: Fallout, The World to Come) and Shia LaBeouf (The Peanut Butter Falcon, Honey Boy), has the most excruciating half-hour of a film you’ll see this year. Expertly pieced together by the film’s editing crew is a single, continuous 23-minute scene meant to represent, likely, at least a few hours of childbirth. It’s intense, gut-wrenching, fascinating, and heartbreaking all at once. As someone who didn’t know a thing about this film going in, other than the first twenty seconds of its trailer that cemented my interest, I thought the entire 23-minute sequence was the whole movie, likely sprinkled with flashbacks to a happier time.
Martha (Kirby) and Sean (LaBeouf) are a younger-ish married couple living near the coast in an unnamed Massachusetts city, expecting their first child. Their marriage is going well when we meet them, despite what some other reviews might lead you to believe. We hadn’t learned much about them before “The Scene,” but we knew that Sean was a hardworking construction worker with six years of sobriety. Martha, a career woman, holds a higher-level role at some companies (we know her position because she has a corner office, while most of her colleagues are in cubicles). We learn early on that she comes from wealth. Her mother, Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn – The Exorcist, Same Time, Next Year), buys her daughter and son-in-law a minivan for their soon-to-be family. Elizabeth disapproves of marrying across class lines, though we don’t see her say it directly. The early icy tension between Elizabeth and Sean foreshadows what is to come.
Martha and Sean have planned for an at-home birth. They playfully jostle in their kitchen in the afternoon, and she goes into labor. He tells terrible kid jokes while she nibbles on comfort food. He’ll do anything to keep her mind off the fact that her body aches all over and that she is nervous about her impending labor. When her contractions begin to intensify and at a more frequent pace, Sean immediately calls their midwife, only to learn that she is currently busy helping deliver another baby. Their midwife suggests Eva. Though she has plenty of years of experience, Eva (Molly Parker – Words on Bathroom Walls, The Wicker Man) is unknown to Martha and Sean.
The 23-minute ordeal has far more intensity and raw emotion than all the other television and movie labors I’ve ever seen combined. I have heard how excruciating it is from family and friends, and I’ve also seen plenty of it in movies and shows. But if this didn’t feel like labor itself, it certainly felt like I was holding the hand of someone going through it. Mundruczó’s camera use made it seem like we were the fourth character in the family room, on the staircase, in the bathroom, and in the bedroom. With the camera so close to the characters, we could see sweat beads slowly slide down Martha’s cheek while hearing her heavy moaning and quiet pants. I read in an interview that the actors did not practice this scene beforehand. Martha, Sean, and Eva choreographed and studied it, so the actors knew where to be relative to one another and the props in the room but didn’t rehearse beforehand. There were six total takes, and before the fourth one, Kirby was so overwhelmed with the scene’s intensity that she began to weep uncontrollably before its filming. Mundruczó ultimately used that take. It’s not fair to compare this scene to Saving Private Ryan’s opening scene, but it left a similar mark. Ultimately, the childbirth ends in tragedy.
The remainder of the movie occurs over the next few months as Martha and Sean unsuccessfully process the loss of the little girl that they were able to hold in their arms for just minutes before she ultimately died. Whatever foundation the relationship was built on quickly crumbles. Left to pick up the pieces as a team, they fail despite their promises to try. Though proximally closer, they are forced to go through the grieving process alone. Neither succeeds. She does her best to return to work but, even on the first day, can’t handle all the eyes on her. Sean, meanwhile, reverts to his old ways of drinking and drugs.
An upcoming criminal court case against Eva, to determine whether she was negligent in her role as a midwife, serves as the backdrop for the rest of the movie. It’s hard to make her an antagonist, but we still need one. On top of that, there are the awful decisions involved with what to do with their baby’s body. Everyone has their own opinion. These wedges drive Martha and Sean even further apart.
Pieces of a Woman is far from a perfect movie. In a way, it unintentionally tries to emulate a film like the nearly flawless Blue Valentine. While never cruel or abusive, Martha and Sean’s relationship is understandably severed. With Elizabeth’s added pressure on each of them, they have no chance of succeeding. The main problem with the film is what happens between the baby’s death and when we pick up with the characters a month or so later. Though they are not, they seem to be doing too well at first. While they aren’t doing well, you’d expect them to do much worse. While it was purposeful of Mundruczó to advance the storyline, he took it too far into the future. That’s not to say there wasn’t plenty of despair to come, because there was. But we didn’t see a period that seemed necessary.
The acting was terrific. Kirby gives an Oscar-worthy performance, and I believe she will get a nomination. She goes through agonizing grief as she tries to understand how this could have happened to her while trying to assign or not assign guilt. She goes through her own personal hell as she tries her best to rush acceptance, even when she knows that heartache must run its course before she can even begin to recover. LaBeouf goes through his transformation, too, justifiably seeking comfort in all the wrong places. Sometimes, when awful things happen, you do what you can to get to the next day, even if you know it will be just as miserable. The serious tone of the last 95+% of the movie clashes entirely with the first five minutes of pleasant contentment. Smiles abound as soon as the contractions start, and shortly after, when panic sets in, we don’t see a smile from either character again. While this is Kirby’s show, the veteran LaBeouf matches her toe-to-toe. Say what you want about the man in his personal life, but he never gives a bad performance on screen.
The film is heavy. I can see many people not making it through the first half-hour. Even if you can, you will not be guaranteed to like it. However, I promise that you’ll appreciate it. And it’s one of those movies you’ll think about for a long time. How would you handle this situation? Well, in Pieces of a Woman, you’ll see two characters, probably not much unlike yourself, deal with it in ways that are anything but healthy.
Plot 9/10
Character Development 8/10
Character Chemistry 9/10
Acting 9.5/10
Screenplay 8.5/10
Directing 9/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 10/10
Hook and Reel 9/10
Universal Relevance 10/10
91%
A-
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