Mark Reviews Movies: PIECES OF A WOMAN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 29, 2020

Screenwriter Kata Wéber and director Kornél Mundruczó open Pieces of a Woman with a sequence that, in retrospect, might be too specific, too harrowing, and too heart-wrenching for the good of the rest of the movie. It shows us so much—about these characters, one of the central relationships, and the extent of the grief that comes to define the rest of the story—in less than 30 minutes, while also allowing Mundruczó to show off his staging skills. The sequence is a one-take, but it's choreographed and performed so naturally that the trickery never becomes distracting.

The rest of the movie, though, is also a gimmick of sorts, in which we watch the fallout of that prologue in various vignettes—each one taking place about a month apart over the course of a year. Some of those also feature one-take shots, trying to replicate the opening's sense of living in and dreading a single moment in time. The result is never as effective as it is in that prologue. That's partially because the characters are trying to evade the truth of what has happened, but it's mostly because the filmmakers seem uncertain about what story to tell with this particular scenario.

The opening (The movie's third scene, technically, after the filmmakers establish a pretty obvious metaphor in the building of a bridge and our protagonist descending toward fate) features Martha (Vanessa Kirby), who is pregnant and about to give birth. It's to be a home birth, and with Martha is her live-in boyfriend Sean (Shia LaBeouf), a construction worker.

Describing what happens in the scene isn't as important as detailing the effect it has. The specifics should be pretty obvious, anyway. Martha starts feeling contractions. They grow stronger and more frequent. The midwife is currently busy with another delivery, so a replacement arrives. She's Eva, played with compassionate diligence by Molly Parker.

Again, these details are apparent and to be expected, but the vital thing is how we gradually realize Mundruczó has no intention of giving us even a moment of escape from the scene. There are no cuts away from or even within the scene. We're there, in close on Martha's face as the pain starts to hit her and then on Sean, as he tries to maintain an air of strength amidst looming panic.

Something is either wrong or about to go wrong. Everyone in the scene has a feeling of it at some point or another. It's impressive how Wéber uses these characters—their inexperience, in the case of the parents, and experience, in the case of Eva—to heighten and calm our own fears about what's happening.

There's a brief moment of relief and absolute joy. It ends with a look of horror on Eva's face.

To put it simply, the rest of this story can't hope to match or follow this virtuoso sequence of filmmaking and acting. Of course, Mundruczó isn't trying to match that level of intensity, because the rest of this story is about an entirely different mood. That's to be expected, but what isn't expected is how this story, which begins with such specificity about its characters and such expertise in adjusting tone, seems to lose track of its purpose so quickly.

We follow Martha and Sean over the course of the aftermath of their baby's sudden death. Martha tries to avoid the topic entirely, returning to work and otherwise acting quite coldly to everyone she encounters—even Sean and her constantly interfering mother Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn). Sean notices, obviously, and becomes increasingly aggressive (One scene here, in which Sean tries to force Martha into intimacy, would have been discomforting enough on its own, but real-life issues involving the actor make it even more so), while sliding back into alcohol and drug abuse. Elizabeth serves both as a further instigator of disunion, making it clear that she doesn't think Sean is good enough for her daughter, and, less convincingly, as an initiator of the sole plot thread of the story, as she insists Martha take legal action against Eva, who's facing a forthcoming criminal trial.

For the most part, the filmmakers confront the hollowing nature of grief, giving us scenes of relative (a party in which small talk results in a lot of anger) or unthinkable (buying a tombstone for the baby) routine weighed down by the knowledge of so much unaddressed pain and mourning. Much of this is meant to be unspoken, just as most of these scenes are intended to be elliptical. There is no putting this situation into words (Kirby is quite good, giving us a sense that she's choosing to be angry, because the alternative would be too much to bear). In theory, there's no easy way to resolve this grief and the resulting divides.

After that opening sequence, Pieces of a Woman becomes a series of one-note scenes without much direction, which is kind of the point, as frustrating as it sometimes is (That's also kind of the point). The major problem here, though, arrives when Wéber and Mundruczó do try to find answers and a resolution, in a pair of courtroom scenes that feel as manipulative as they are clichéd.

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