Movie Review: Pieces of a Woman
Molly Parker (left) and Vanessa Kirby (right) in Pieces of a Woman. Source: Netflix
Life proves more mysterious than death for a grieving Boston couple, whom we meet in the fleeting moments before their daughter’s death. It takes 25 minutes, in an unmarred scene shot in a single haunting take, for Martha (Vanessa Kirby) to deliver her baby before the unthinkable threatens to tear her apart. Even as Martha’s water breaks in the kitchen, a sense of dread permeates any hope for a beautiful, life-altering moment. Only the latter concept survives.
Classism is present for Sean, partner to Martha, and it’s not working in his favor. Before the baby’s arrival, Martha’s anxious mother Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn) insists on purchasing the couple a new, family friendly minivan. She also rarely misses the chance to emasculate Sean, purposefully or not. Compared to Martha’s affluent background, Sean is brutish, a working class construction foreman and recovering addict. His current assignment is to build a bridge over water, a convenient metaphor for their partnership.
Pieces of a Woman is a domestic drama infused with the hair-raising despair typical of director Kornél Mundruczó. Like childbirth, this will not be easy, nor will the experience be without pain. The spectacular at-home birth sequence near the beginning of the film is notably for capturing every visceral, delirious groan and hot-white pain with unfiltered honesty and without egrigiousness. This scene would set the tone for rest of the movie, which is why cinematographer Benjamin Loeb chooses intimacy over invasive examination by way of sweeping, pulse-like camera movements.
Kirby, who has never given birth, is nuanced, fearful and desperate as her body appears to revolt against her. Unable to remain in one place for too long, her mind attempts to escape the pain. The clicking sound of medical gloves leads to eyes widened in shock. Her reactions are as controlled and executed as her breathing, gripping her way through labor. There’s a sinking feeling that something might be physically wrong, in spite of the predictable pain of childbirth. Sean remains steadfast by her side, a genuine presence wanting to share the pain with Martha. He appeases her by cracking dopey jokes to make her laugh. In response, she gazes into his eyes speaking a secret language only they know.
Meanwhile, the midwife, Ava, (played by an unrecognizable Molly Parker) a last-minute replacement, is meticulous yet soft-spoken. She moves deliberately, although with glaring uncertainty crawling under her skin. Increasingly unnerved with the labor’s progress, she refrains from additional life-saving help, a decision that may make her culpable in the infant’s death.
For as much as this movie is a character study of a woman at the hinterland of mental breakdown, it’s also an examination of a unlikely contemporary relationship. It’ clear they’re polar opposites who have aligned in love, but is that feeling unconditional? Her presence is simultaneously commanding and fearsome, portraying Martha with the volatility of a ticking bomb. She inhabits Martha’s transition suddenly, as though she’s woken up on Mars. As Sean continues to grapple for communication, Martha becomes a resentful, vacant room of a woman.
To the surprise of her apprehensive coworkers, Martha returns to work before the baby is even buried. She wistfully glides past cubicles. The radiance is gone, but her head is high, eyes unblinking, her belly flat. In the following months, she becomes increasingly distant and contemptuous of her mother’s plea to pursue criminal charges against Ava. Sean’s attempts to save their relationship and her family prove increasingly futile. In an almost unforgivable act of revenge against Sean for misspelling their daughter’s name, she declares the baby’s body will be donated to science. He cries, begging her not to give baby Yvette’s body away. Looking him in the eyes, undeterred by his emotional state, she promises to not donate the remains, but signs the paperwork anyway.
As Martha continues to isolate herself from Sean, he relapses into drugs and alcohol, ruining a six-year track record of sobriety. LaBeouf heartbreakingly transforms from comforting and witted to the reckless and bruised ghost of his former self, leaving viewers to determine if his dependency on substances was masked by a dependency on Martha’s love. This downward spiral leads to a cringeworthy and forced attempt at regaining intimacy. Eventually leading to vicious personal attacks on each other, the once endearing home becomes a sparring ring.
Elizabeth remains in orbit around the couple, pushing a criminal lawsuit against the midwife’s “incompetence,” a choice Sean agrees with, but Martha may forego. Tensions come to a head at a family dinner devised by Elizabeth as a sort of intervention to convince Martha of Ava’s culpability in the baby’s death. Before anything can be achieved, Sean and his brother in law engage in an unfortunate conversation about music that she feels is meant to bring the baby’s death to light. Subsequently, Martha, who’s been circling the room like a predator waiting to attack, finally provokes a psychological game in the form of a mood-ruining argument. In response, Burstyn explodes with a transcendent tour de force monologue regarding a personal history of womanhood, childbirth and mothering, but primarily survival. (Word around the camp fire is Burstyn came up with some of this dialogue on the spot.) It’s a story that seems to breakthrough in Kirby’s eyes, if only momentarily.
No doubt, this movie’s subject matter will be contentious but eternally memorable. But so is the story’s presentation of context, which is why casting Martha could have been disastrous. A character like Martha is unique territory, the star-making kind of casting choice that changes someone’s life. In particular, childbirth scenes are often overdone or come off as hokey/comical. God forbid a good script be desecrated with Lifetime Original Movie-level overacting. As it were, the very capable Vanessa Kirby delivers a wrenching Oscar-worth performance that will likely catapult her to superstardom (If she’s into that kind of thing).
Audiences will undeniably leave Pieces of a Woman with divisive opinions. To this point, at least they will be thinking about the movie long after the credits. Ultimately, in a script written by Kata Wéber, the story happens blindly upon its ending, which is fair. A courtroom setting lays the groundwork for an absolution that can’t be determined, legally or medically. Who is to blame for the death of a baby will have to live on in the characters’ various respective paths. In some ways, the climax was the childbirth scene at the beginning of the film, leaving the rest to play out from the perspective of a ghost. The pieces to Martha and Sean’s disintegration are as tangible as the apples frequently reference. They are untouchable, incapable of being put together again.