Born of tragedy
Kirby, Burstyn are reasons to see ‘Pieces of a Woman’
Vanessa Kirby delivers a heartwrenching performance as a woman who experiences unspeakable loss during a home birth procedure in “Pieces of a Woman.” But you wonder if the film’s set-up is too contrived, if not masochistic by design, and if Kirby, who rose to fame for her witty turn as Princess Margaret on “The Crown,” deserves even more credit for making us believe (well, I didn’t) that she is married to costar Shia LaBeouf. The two, who play husband and wife, act as if they don’t want to be in the same room together.
Directed by Hungarian auteur Kornel Mundruczo of “White God” fame, the film is based on a stage play first performed in Poland and is Mundruczo’s first English-language film adapted to the screen by Kata Weber (Mundruczo’s “Jupiter’s Moon”). Opening scenes of this Montreal-shot film establish that Boston pair Martha (Kirby) and Sean Carson (LaBeouf) are a passionate, loving couple, that Martha’s aristocratic mother Elizabeth hates Sean, who is a coarse construction worker, and that Martha is about to have the couple’s first child in a home delivery.
That something terrible is going to happen hangs weightily over the proceedings. It is excruciating, and the drama goes on to focus on a courtroom battle between Martha and Sean, whose marriage is crumbling, and Eva Woodward (Molly Parker), the midwife whose actions arguably doomed the child.
Ellen Burstyn’s Elizabeth, whose hairstyle seems carved in marble, has a standout monologue. But she otherwise seems to exist as a the aging parental irritant. For me, the most interesting thing about “Pieces of a Woman” is the difference between LaBeouf’s rough and ready pseudo-Method, full-frontal acting and what everyone else is doing. Kirby delivers a devastating portrait of a woman whose loss is sudden, irrevocable and possibly a sign of the end of her marriage and her mental stability. Martha begins to act bizarrely. The act-one delivery sequence is a tour de force not only because of its heightened emotions (the original midwife sends a last-minute replacement), but because Mundruczo and cameraman Benjamin Loeb (“Mandy”) shoot it as a 23-minute, unbroken sequence. After this stunning starter, the rest of the film has no choice but to seem like an afterthought.
We learn that construction worker Sean — wait for it — builds bridges (we see one being completed in stages in heavy-handed shots). Sean also has addiction issues, not unlike LaBeouf, who is currently embroiled in a #MeToo controversy with an ex-partner and has been replaced by Harry Styles in a current production directed by Olivia Wilde. The casting (Was it the suggestion of producer Martin Scorsese?) of New York comic Iliza Shlesinger as Martha’s sister, director Ben Safdie as the sister’s husband and Aussie Sarah Snook of “Succession” as a lawyer cousin, who represents Martha and Sean seems a bit distracting. The roles really do not amount to very much. Yes, Burstyn has her big scene, and she is searing. But after that soulclobbering first act in which Kirby gives her all, I expected more from the guy who gave us a barking, four-legged rebel god.
(“Pieces of a Woman” contains profanity, nudity, scenes of extreme anguish and drug use.)