Vanes­sa Kir­by grieves in the Pieces of a Woman trailer

As the end of the year approach­es, the slate of awards sea­son con­tenders has begun to take shape, even with the Oscar win­dow extend­ed beyond the begin­ning of 2021. One late-com­ing play­er would be Vanes­sa Kir­by, who won the Best Actress prize at this year’s Venice Film Fes­ti­val, and now hopes to main­tain that momen­tum for fur­ther awards gold.

Pieces of a Woman is the film that’s earned her across-the-board plau­dits in recent months, and today brings a first trail­er pri­or to its release on Net­flix. In the first Eng­lish-lan­guage fea­ture from Hun­gar­i­an direc­tor Kornél Mundruczó, she gives her actor­ly mus­cles a work­out as a woman con­tend­ing with a grief beyond imag­in­ing for most peo­ple, every mother’s worst nightmare.

She and Shia LaBeouf play expec­tant par­ents torn apart by the death of their infant child, a trau­ma that sends her retreat­ing into denial while he embraces a pain he might not sur­vive. In their attempt to make sense of this tragedy, they move to file charges of crim­i­nal neg­li­gence against the mid­wife (Mol­ly Park­er) who facil­i­tat­ed their home birth, though the suit might be more moti­vat­ed by the wish­es of her over­bear­ing moth­er (Ellen Burstyn).

Notices have been gen­er­al­ly pos­i­tive, with spe­cial praise reserved for Kirby’s no-hold­ing-back per­for­mance and Burstyn’s sup­port­ing turn of force­ful manip­u­la­tion. In her review from this year’s TIFF, LWLies own Han­nah Wood­head wrote pos­i­tive­ly of the film’s deep well­spring of empa­thy for par­ents har­bor­ing unspeak­able hurt: ​“For those who have under­gone such a trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence, it’s essen­tial that they are giv­en the sup­port they need, and some­thing a sim­ple as acknowl­edg­ing their expe­ri­ence can be vital.”

Like Rab­bit Hole before it, this por­trait of mourn­ing will undoubt­ed­ly fall into the tra­di­tion of poignant films too emo­tion­al­ly excru­ci­at­ing to watch more than once. Par­ents in par­tic­u­lar, keep your hand­ker­chiefs close by while streaming.

Pieces of a Woman comes to select the­aters in the US on 30 Decem­ber, then to Net­flix on 7 January.