As in real life, tragedy begets messiness
The single most harrowing and brilliantly filmed sequence of any movie of the past year begins 5 ½ minutes into “Pieces of a Woman.” It stretches for about 25 minutes in a single, unbroken take, beginning in calm and ending in frenzy.
Martha (Vanessa Kirby), a pregnant woman, goes into labor, and her partner (Shia Labeouf ) snaps into action. He calls the midwife. But wait — the midwife is busy with another client. Not to worry, an alternate midwife (Molly Parker) is on the way. So everything is going to be fine. Then Martha’s water breaks, and the pains get worse.
Still, it appears that what we’re seeing is a regular childbirth — scary and painful, and yet routine. The midwife enters and radiates warmth and calm. The calm and warmth are practiced and yet real, and in any case the practiced nature of her responses is reassuring: I’ve seen thousands of these. There’s nothing to worry about.
These 25 minutes on screen, made more dramatic by its being filmed in a single shot, are like a testament to how many places people can go emotionally in such a short space of time.
In between contractions, we see who this pregnant woman is — she’s sardonic, she’s witty. We see who the partner is — eager, coarse, not too bright. And we see the midwife, albeit gradually, as her surface serenity cracks and she begins to panic.
“Pieces of a Woman” was directed by Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo and written by his partner, Kata Weber, loosely based on their own real-life experience. The film follows Martha over the course of a year, following a tragedy.
Because nothing can top the first half-hour for drama and artistry, “Pieces of a Woman” inevitably loses some intensity for its remaining time, but that’s acceptable.
There’s a place for this kind of a film, which explores the aftermath of a life-changing
event, even if it means that, for a time, we’re watching someone in a stupor.
What’s fascinating about Kirby here is that even when she appears to be doing nothing, she’s worth watching. It could be, in such moments, that we’re reading into her performances emotions that we have; after all, we know what she went through, because we were there.
But it’s probably more than that. She plays Martha like a live volcano. Even when she’s still, we know she could explode.
The filmmakers do something wise in “Pieces of a Woman,” which is unlike what we normally see in American movies.
It doesn’t try to define the characters in moral terms, as good or bad, or right or wrong. It just lets them exist in their imperfection and complexity.
In American movies, tragedies generally befall noble people, and their journey becomes about their reclaiming their nobility. Here, the characters are, to varying degrees, a mess,
and tragedy doesn’t ennoble them. It makes them messier.
This moral complexity is how “Pieces of a Woman” stays interesting for a full 90 minutes past its most dramatic event. Who are these people? They can’t be classified and forgotten. They must be watched.
Ellen Burstyn plays Martha’s hard-driving mother, an admirable, forceful woman that you would like as a friend and probably not want as your mother. She’s convinced that she’s always right, and yet she’s not always wrong.
Labeouf, cast against type as a visceral, mountain-man sort of character, is also strong, playing a likable guy who
means well but is not someone for the long haul. He’s the kind of fellow that a woman might be attracted to if she had the Burstyn character for a mother. Mom is integrity without warmth. He’s geniality without honor.
All this takes place in a wintry, frosted-over place, which is supposed to be Boston but is mostly Montreal. If spring is ever coming, you’d never know it. It’s bound to arrive, but in this moment, in this world, it hardly seems possible.
Running time: 126 minutes Rating: R (sexual content, brief drug use, profanity, graphic nudity)