Grade: B+
In 2008, I directed a play, and cast a 22-year-old (that we made up to look older) as a mother of several children with another on the way. The actress wore a bump, and as she had never been pregnant before at the time, she was coached on how to walk and move around by women who had been through that. I’ve always wanted to ask her – now that she’s experienced that in real life, is there anything she would have done differently when thinking back on that performance, or does she feel like she nailed it. Vanessa Kirby, nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for Pieces of a Woman, has never given birth – but she makes it as convincing as can be and earns her nomination from the film’s harrowing first half hour alone.
Skip over this paragraph (and maybe the movie, though you’d be missing out) if the loss of a child, particularly a baby, hits close to home for you or is a trigger. Martha (Vanessa Kirby) and Sean (Shia LaBeouf) are expecting a baby girl due any day now, and they are determined to have a home birth. One evening, her water breaks at home, and she and Sean are unable to get their preferred midwife to come, as she is occupied with another birth at that very moment. Molly Parker is an actress who did great work in Words on Bathroom Walls, one of my favorite films of 2020, not that I saw much last year. She is at least as memorable here, as the “backup” midwife who does promptly show up to assist. There are screams, cries, struggles, and concerns that the baby is in distress. Midwife tells dad to call 911. Baby comes out looking good initially. Mom gets to hold her for a minute or less, then the baby turns blue. Fade to black, as the movie’s title shows up on the screen a half hour in. This astonishing scene lasts 23 minutes, and is one long continuous shot.
We rejoin the characters a couple weeks later as they deal with the grief from this unthinkable tragedy. There is enough here for a whole movie from just this, but that’s not all there is. Pieces of a Woman has lots more heavy drama. There’s infidelity, a relapse back into a former drug addiction, and some surprisingly blunt honesty from extended family members. All the while, the midwife is facing negligence or even murder charges. I expected Kirby to be fabulous, being an Oscar nominee, but it’s LaBeouf’s sneaky-good performance that I was equally affected by. They have believable chemistry. The supporting cast steps up to the plate awesomely. Ellen Burstyn is riveting as Martha’s mother – a multifaceted character. Iliza Shlesinger, a talented stand-up comedian known for her 5 Netflix specials, plays Martha’s sister. Nice to see her here, in a different kind of project for her. Benny Safdie and Sarah Snook round things out, and I’ll leave you to discover how they play into everything. In one of the movie’s few flaws, most of the characters all seem to be related to each other somehow, whether it be by marriage or blood. Seems too convenient.
Pieces of a Woman has a lovely score, and beautiful wintry locations. When the last scene began, it felt like we were in Terrence Malick territory, and I was thinking “ok, where are we going with this?” But then it ended as a sweet epilogue that provided us with a glimmer of hope. Pieces of a Woman can be exhausting and difficult to sit through, but is quite well-done, and I hope it was cathartic for the screenwriters to draw upon some of their real-life experiences for this. I’m not in a hurry to see it again anytime soon, but I think you should.
Grade: B+
Film Reviews by Mark 
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