There’s a moment midway through Pieces of a Woman that brings Princess Margaret, the character Vanessa Kirby played to perfection on The Crown, vividly to mind. At her mother’s house for a family gathering with a still-undefined ulterior purpose, Kirby’s character, Martha, paces the room, listening impatiently to the dull conversation around her and waiting for the right moment to pounce. She is lacerating and merciless, a woman hurting and eager to hurt others. Having endured an unbelievable tragedy, Martha’s pain makes her the focal point of the room as much as Margaret’s celebrity did for her.
Kirby, who just won the best actress prize at the Venice Film Festival for this role, excels at the stony silence, and Pieces of a Woman has plenty of them, as Martha squares off with her partner Sean (Shia LaBeouf), her overbearing mother (Ellen Burstyn), even strangers on the bus. But the film’s inarguable high point is its a bravura opening sequence, which relies on Kirby to bring everything to the surface— a (seemingly) single-take, 23-minute childbirth scene, which ends in devastation. It’s a bold statement of purpose for a film that doesn’t quite know where to go from there, but for Kirby it’s merely the beginning of yet another career-defining performance, and probably only the second of many.
Director Kornél Mundruczó and writer Kata Weber (who share a “film by” credit) do not spend much time with Martha and Sean before the film’s central tragedy begins to unfold, only enough to get the basics. Martha works in a fancy office; Sean works on a construction site building a bridge that will be an exceedingly visible metaphor throughout the film; Martha’s mom, Elizabeth,has bought them a car, which is just one more thing for Sean to resent. But they seem reasonably happy, and as Martha goes into labor their bond seems unshakeable—until, of course, the worst imaginable thing arrives to shake it.
After their newborn daughter dies, Martha retreats into icy resolve, returning to the office and making plans to donate the baby’s body to science. Sean, meanwhile, teams up with Elizabeth to press charges against the midwife Eva (Molly Parker, understated and wonderful), bringing a court case structure to a film that doesn’t quite need it. There are, thankfully, few scenes of the ugly-crying and “Why, God, why” that so often come with grief in the movies; instead, jumping ahead by weeks and months at a time, the film checks in here and there with Martha and Sean as their relationship evaporates. It’s an efficient way to depict a lengthy grieving process, but also reduces their relationship to something of a highlight reel, an unfortunate choice for a couple we didn’t know all that much about in the first place. LaBeouf, as has become his wont, brings out Sean’s grief in bellows and rage, while Martha hides behind cat-eye makeup and fabulous clothes, her hurt only visible on second glance.
Pieces of a Woman tends to tell instead of show, with Elizabeth admitting to Sean that she never liked him before we’ve really gotten a grasp on their relationship, or Sean escalating a fight into name-calling that feels out of character. It makes the excruciating childbirth sequence stand out all the more, as Benjamin Loeb’s camera swoops past Parker’s worried eyes, LaBeouf’s tightly coiled body language, or Kirby’s throat letting out the guttural moans of a woman who thinks the labor is going to be the most painful part. That long, beautiful, heartbreaking scene finds bracing cinematic language for a process that is so often euphemized—until the tragic conclusion, it is a remarkably realistic childbirth for a narrative film, in all its gross wonder. It is a relief when the scene ends, but also a bit of a shame, watching that lightning bolt recede into a more modest flicker.
That is, except for Kirby, who even in Martha’s iciness, maintains the vividness of that extraordinary scene, and brings to life a woman whom the film almost entirely defines by tragedy. Pieces of a Woman ends on a note of resolution tied directly to motherhood. I was initially disappointed that they couldn’t come up with another way to fulfill the character, but then I realized I knew almost nothing else about her. It was just that Kirby made me think I did.
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