A Woman Faces Emptiness After an Unspeakable Loss

Vanessa Kirby and Ellen Burstyn in 
"Pieces of a Woman"
Photo Credit: RottenTomatoes.com

There have been countless movies that focus on motherhood, shedding light on the hardships and rewards that come with the undertaking of raising a child.  Even more heartbreaking are the stories that deal with parents suffering through the loss of a child, showing the intense grief that they feel in losing someone so young and so soon.  That’s what director Kornél Mundruczó does with the harrowing drama, “Pieces of a Woman,” a movie that shows how the power of motherhood never leaves, even after their child is gone.

Martha Weiss (Vanessa Kirby) and her partner, Sean (Shia LaBeouf), are preparing for the arrival of their first baby.  When the infant dies after complications with the home birth, Martha will face the effects of this unfathomable tragedy and deal with the emotional distance that grows between her, Sean, and her family.

Kirby offers a devastating performance as a woman trying to navigate her life after her loss, as well as showing the strength that’s needed for bringing someone into the world.  For the latter, Kirby does everything that she can to make you feel the physical strenuousness that her character experiences as she prepares to give birth, with heavy breathing and exclamations of pain as she tries to deliver her baby.  Afterwards, her acting is required to be more on the subdued side, but is just as soul-stirring.  Here, the expressiveness of her eyes and face as she seems to just drift through her life in the weeks after giving birth shows Martha’s numbness, someone who looks as though she might never be happy again.  Then, when it comes time for Martha to testify at the trial of her midwife, Kirby shows the difficulty that it takes her character to recount what she went through on that tragic night, but leaves you hoping that she’ll find some sort of closure.

LaBeouf is terrific as Sean, a character who’s trying to deal with the loss of his child and maintain a connection to Martha, who keeps growing distant.  While Martha always seems closed off, LaBeouf presents Sean as someone who has more of an outward and volatile personality when it comes to expressing his grief.  This leaves us tense as we wait to see how he will move forward during this ordeal, and LaBeouf shows a vivid portrait of how someone can express their grief differently from someone else, despite sharing the same tragedy with that person.

Ellen Burstyn provides beautiful work as Martha’s mother.  She presents a parent who wants the best for her daughter and to see her receive justice, often butting heads with Martha as they disagree on how to proceed.  Burstyn’s work is effectively understated for most of the movie, but she’s given a searing monologue near the final third of the movie when she explains why she wants her daughter to attend the midwife’s trial.  This scene hits as hard as anything else in the movie and is a moment when we understand her character’s well-meaning intrusiveness, showing a mother who views this situation through her own tragic past.

The screenplay by Kata Wéber is at its strongest in the first half hour.  But, despite the rest of the movie not quite reaching the heavy poignancy of that part of the movie, it still manages to make you feel the magnitude of the aftermath and what the characters are experiencing.  Following the birthing sequence, the movie is an exploration of Martha’s grief and how she processes the world around her in the days that seem to blur together.  This portion of the narrative has Martha going through several different settings, be it something as saddening as looking for a headstone, or a pastime like jogging or spending time at a dance club.  However, no matter what Martha does in her day-to-day life, there’s always the sense of emotional trauma that permeates her life, and Wéber’s narrative provides us with a vivid view of what Marth’s experiencing and shows how difficult it is to live through the unbearable anguish of losing her baby.

The cinematography Benjamin Loeb is the film’s most noteworthy technical aspect, and that’s because of a birthing sequence that’s shot and edited to look like a 20-minute long take that takes place within the first half hour of the movie.  As we experience this scene in real time, it has an emotionally exhausting effect on the viewer, navigating us through the physically draining task of giving birth, and then the heart-wrenching realization of what has happened.

Mundruczó never fails to lose the sense of loss that diffuses through the film.  Every scene after the opening half hour provides us with the feeling of Martha’s loss and emptiness that never seems like it will go away.  The atmosphere of devastation that Mundruczó builds brings us right into Martha’s state of mind as we take this journey with her and try to remain hopeful that she will find a way to emerge from the wreckage of this unforeseen tragedy.

As we go through Martha’s emotional odyssey, “Pieces of a Woman” solidifies itself as a movie that shows how even someone at their most broken can be made whole again.

Grade: A-