Pieces of a Woman

Kornél Mundruczó’s dra­ma, writ­ten by his part­ner and fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Kata Wéber, focus­es on an ele­ment of moth­er­hood so rarely depict­ed on screen, it feels rad­i­cal and dev­as­tat­ing all at once.

Expec­tant par­ents Martha Weiss (Van­nes­sa Kir­by) and Sean Park­er (Shia LaBeouf) await the arrival of their daugh­ter in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts: they’ve dec­o­rat­ed the nurs­ery, and even pur­chased a new car with the help of Martha’s wealthy moth­er Eliz­a­beth (Ellen Burstyn). Ten­sions nig­gle between the cou­ple – Sean is a recov­er­ing addict work­ing an intense job in bridge con­struc­tion, and Martha dis­tant in a way that makes her appear cold – but it’s evi­dent that the baby is much want­ed, and the cou­ple are excit­ed about her arrival.

Opt­ing for a home birth, the couple’s reg­u­lar mid­wife can’t attend when Martha goes into labour, so a replace­ment, Eve (Mol­ly Park­er), arrives. Over the course of a gru­elling labour, which plays out in an intense, inti­mate 23-minute scene cut to sug­gest a sin­gle take (with hand-cam mim­ic­k­ing a home video), a tragedy occurs, and Martha and Sean’s daugh­ter dies short­ly after birth.

The rest of the film deals with the after­math of this awful, life-chang­ing moment, and the crim­i­nal neg­li­gence court case against Eve that Martha’s fam­i­ly insti­gate. No one knows how to acknowl­edge Martha and Sean’s loss, and the cou­ple them­selves strug­gle to grieve, while the fall­out dev­as­tates every­one in their imme­di­ate fam­i­ly. The apart­ment Martha and Sean share becomes a war­zone; Eliz­a­beth starts to unrav­el, heart­bro­ken by her daughter’s loss.

LaBeouf is decent as the epit­o­me of blue-col­lar machis­mo unable to process grief with­out turn­ing to anger, but this is undoubt­ed­ly Vanes­sa Kirby’s film. Martha is a woman of few words: terse, stiff, unable to process her trau­ma in a way that peo­ple around her find acceptable.

Would it be more palat­able to those around her if she screamed and cried? Per­haps, but Martha is despon­dent. She returns to her office less than a month after the birth, still wear­ing med­ical under­wear, while her col­leagues gawp at her. She goes out drink­ing and danc­ing and flirts with a co-work­er. There’s no right or wrong way to process a loss so mon­u­men­tal, and Pieces of a Woman is an empa­thet­ic look at some­thing most of us will nev­er under­stand unless we expe­ri­ence it.

This isn’t to say Pieces of a Woman is with­out flaw; a dis­tract­ing Sig­ur Rós musi­cal beat threat­ens to derail the grav­i­tas of the labour scene, and the cli­mac­tic moment of Martha’s court case feels a lit­tle heavy-hand­ed in its exe­cu­tion. But Mundruczó is prov­ing an excel­lent film­mak­er when it comes to facil­i­tat­ing moments of true emo­tion­al res­o­nance, and his lat­est film cer­tain­ly offers them – not just in the trau­mat­ic, but in unex­pect­ed­ly awk­ward­ly comedic beats, such as when Martha’s broth­er-in-law Chris (Ben­ny Safdie) tries to offer her some advice from his pastor.

There are plen­ty of films about moth­er­hood in its myr­i­ad forms – even a whole sub­genre of hor­ror films about the ter­rors of mater­ni­ty. But as a soci­ety, we strug­gle to talk about the dev­as­tat­ing loss of life before it’s even begun. Mis­car­riage, still­birth and sud­den infant death are top­ics many of us strug­gle to com­pre­hend, let alone talk about. But 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.

Ulti­mate­ly, Martha just wants to be seen and heard. She wants her daughter’s life to mat­ter, for her to be more than just evi­dence in a court case or the name on a grave­stone. Although slight­ly too keen to resolve its ten­sions with a neat end­ing, Pieces of a Woman is a del­i­cate, dev­as­tat­ing account of an all-too-com­mon but lit­tle-spo­ken-about sort of grief, and worth see­ing for Kirby’s per­for­mance alone, which sug­gests she should be tak­ing on roles much more chal­leng­ing than her most recent efforts co-star­ring in Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble and Hobbs & Shaw.