TIFF 2020 Film Review: Pieces of a Woman
A Blistering Performance Elevates the Undercooked drama of Pieces of a Woman
Vanessa Kirby shines in Kornél Mundruczó’s and Kata Wéber’s Pieces of a Woman, a devastating drama that details the act of living in the wake of unimaginable tragedy. The film finds considerable buoyancy in its awards-worthy performances, but struggles to escape the shadow of its searing single-take opening scene. Unable to commit to its most powerful thread, Pieces of a Woman flounders in its scattered and callow narratives. Minor spoilers below…
Director Kornél Mundruczó and longtime partner Kata Wéber - whose exhilarating fantasy White God netted them the Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2014 - return to TIFF this year with their English language debut, Pieces of a Woman. Deeply personal and brazenly raw (Wéber shares the “film by” credit), the narrative paints a portrait of crippling grief and trauma in the aftermath of an unspeakable loss. Supported by a few keystones of tremendous performance and an audacious long take that opens the film, Pieces is undeniably powerful, but it spends much of its 126-minute runtime attempting to match the velocity and bravura of its stunning oner, to extremely mixed results.
Like Mundruczó’s prior work, Pieces is subsumed - for better (White God) or worse (Tender Son) - by its virtuoso craftwork. At the film’s center is its 30-minute opening scene, shot in a single take, following Martha (a phenomenal Vanessa Kirby) and Sean (Shia LaBeouf) as they prepare for a grueling home birth in their Boston townhouse. A white-knuckle sequence that expertly ratchets up a vice-grip of tension, director of photography Benjamin Loeb shoots the ill-fated delivery on Steadicams and gimbals, supplanting a traditional handheld approach with an otherworldly smoothness that only adds to the dread. From the start, things go awry for the couple. Martha begins to feels uncharacteristically ill, choking back vomit as her water breaks, and things go from bad to worse when the scheduled midwife is waylaid by a particularly difficult labor, resulting in a last-minute replacement: the shaky and frazzled Eve (Molly Parker). It’s an increasingly tragic scene that telegraphs its impending devastation, and it quite possibly counts as Mundruczó’s most ambitious work in his storied career.
“…[Pieces of a Woman] is undeniably powerful, but it spends much of its 125-minute runtime attempting to match the velocity and bravura of its stunning oner, to extremely mixed results.”
Last week at Venice, Vanessa Kirby was awarded the prestigious Volpi Cup Award for Best Actress, and for good reason. Pieces of a Woman largely rests on the shoulders of Kirby’s crushing performance, plumbing the depths of a shattered soul in the throes of grief. Much of the film follows Martha as she navigates the fallout of her loss, detonating her relationships and committing fully to a coldness that neither her partner nor her mother (Ellen Burstyn) can penetrate. It’s an unshakable portrayal that counts among 2020’s best, but unfortunately, Pieces’ uneven script can’t live up to Kirby’s powerhouse turn nor the confidence of its stunning long take.
Pieces of a Woman functions best as a harrowing character study, but it’s too mired in melodrama and undercooked subplots to truly shine. It’s a bit of a shame, since Kirby is supported by great performers of a similar caliber. Shia LeBoeuf doesn’t exactly stretch outside of his wheelhouse as Sean, but he pulls a compelling and emotional performance out of an underwritten part. As the film puts more and more weight upon Martha’s journey, Sean’s begins to feel relegated to the sidelines, and there’s a depth to a father’s loss that is just sadly unexplored. Ellen Burstyn, as Martha’s domineering mother, is the other standout performance here as she slings the wounding arrows of judgment; waving bribes, speaking out of turn, and offering unwanted advice, Burstyn is formidable. At one point, she delivers a particularly deep barb: “Martha, if you’d done it my way, you’d be holding your baby in your arms right now.” Much awards attention will probably be placed upon Burstyn’s big monologue in the third act, but its jumbled takes on class, grit, and the Holocaust are largely forced and clearly awards season bait.
Perhaps the film’s biggest misstep is its most underdeveloped narrative: the courtroom drama. And while the way it unfurls may have roots in Mundruczó and Wéber’s real lives, it’s a largely misguided endeavor that never gets off the ground. Hints of a purported media circus never materialize into anything more, and there’s barely enough substance to convince us of Eve’s culpability as the midwife in a botched delivery. I also find it particularly baffling that Pieces of a Woman can successfully navigate the human quotient of crippling grief, yet have its catharsis - or lack thereof - take place in the sterility of a legal proceeding.
Pieces of a Woman is bracing, emotionally draining cinema that peaks early. Vanessa Kirby is simply astounding in the best performance of her career, but sadly, the narrative pieces that orbit around her never gel. Hobbled by its own ambition, the film never rises back to the intensity nor the focus of its single take stunner - Pieces strives for a return, but just like Martha and Sean, there is no recourse.
