Pieces of a Woman (2021) Review

When Martha Weiss (played by Vanessa Kirby) and her partner Sean Carson (played by Shia LaBeouf) decide to have a home birth for their upcoming child, things take a heart wrenching turn, when their unknown midwife informs them of a complication in their baby’s breathing.

 

Pieces of a Woman is a dark, sobering tale of regret, discovery and acceptance. About anticipating the worst based on your mistakes, and trauma leading to negative mental and physical responses festering from an unexpected extreme event.

 

Director Kornél Mundruczó (White God, 2014) takes his signature style of eerie, “

in your face” observation with sparks of hope in slice of life moments, and pointedly applies it to one of his coldest and most honest films yet, that boldly exposes the lies people in committed relationships tell each other and the lies and misinterpretations people peddle to one another in any type of relationship to get along. Director Kornél Mundruczó uses a lake back drop as the month by month starting point of a year in pain and recovery in the setting of Boston, displaying the drab individual isolation of a blue collar career and a white collar career alike between Martha and her partner Sean. Using blues and whites to display each lifestyle all under a grey umbrella of numbness. Pieces of a Woman plays with the realities of consequences with choices, that once shove something under a rug, it’s bound to tear itself once again. The fear of women losing their jobs after a 9 month pregnancy, the fear of losing a false sense of masculinity, the fear of being seen as low class, the feeling of carrying a life inside you and regaining that feeling after it’s over through unconscious metaphor, dealing with an abusive spouse and antagonizing families members, how our bodies give away exactly what we’re experiencing on the inside on the outside; these are the struggles boldly exposed in Kornél Mundruczó’s Pieces of a Woman that are a part of the day to day struggle to cope with the failure felt with pregnancy complications for a Boston, Mass couple on the verge of destruction. All this conjured thoroughly and thoughtfully by a powerful script written by Kata Weber.

 

Vanessa Kirby does her best work yet exploring Martha’s spiral down the drain, understanding her mentally comprehending of nursing someone inside her and suddenly not at all while and that experience as a whole through continuing in her regular day to day before the pregnancy, as well as keeping up with appearance to her friends and family under the embarrassment of admitting failure and what that all could interpret, with the pressure of being under her overbearing mother’s thumb played by the unbeatable Ellen Burstyn, once again pushing the limit of acting as the most convincingly blunt, unrelenting and passive aggressive, scarily unaware mother we all know to well, and creepily so. Now the criminal elephant in the room, is Shia LaBeouf who is facing allegations of physical abuse towards his ex in real life, and it’s quite apparent in his performance as Sean Carson that he is channeling real habits in this role and that “method” is under playing his acting here, and his reality as a sick individual who needs serious help in real life. Beyond that though, classic Canadian actor Molly Parker absolutely shines as the unknown midwife, with truly poignant and effective work expressing someone who’s feet are to the fire, sick to their stomach with overwhelmed fear and grief of what frightening accusations they could face that they could not avoid if they tried.

 

Just as a shout out to the location of Quebec standing in for Boston; the Quebec winter back drop not only is a convincing Boston but services as the perfect dark overlord holding all these traumatized, beaten down individuals and the demons they are admitting to scene by painful scene. This location coupled with the film’s soundtrack doesn’t quite work as the sound track is bland, obvious and at times down right inappropriate for the subject matter; maybe incorporate a classic synth score or some abstract acoustic guitar instead of the same tired sappy song cue meant to reciprocate connection or instead of the odd inappropriate sardonic based piano score during a scene of rediscovery, but regardless, beggars can’t be choosers.

 

Pieces of a Woman is one of those classic films that embarrassingly reminds us of ourselves through its hardcore realism through acting and directing, while reminding us that we aren’t the characters on screen and that we should be thankful of that. Pieces of a Woman terrifies us but ultimate keeps things in check as we all know in the end, life goes on. 7.5/10.

 

 

• Maurice Jones