THE first 30 minutes of the film Pieces of a Woman must be one of the most stressful—good stressful—introductions to a dramatic film. High-octane energy is usually the province of action films but seldom do we expect tension in a film about a woman on the verge of motherhood. While birthing a child is the prime staple of default, and therefore predictable, histrionics in many common films, the same process is made so graphic in this film that one feels like a voyeur in that moment between a doctor or a midwife and a woman.
Vanessa Kirby, as Martha, twists and contorts herself in the effort to deliver the baby. Her husband, Sean (Shia LaBeouf), is also part of the picture as he holds his wife who recoils, holds his leg and nearly bites it. The midwife resorts to asking the pregnant woman to be in the bathtub. The midwife guides her and we feel both the ease and difficulty of the act.
All this time, the camera navigates medium and closeup shots, with the angles produced because the cinematographer, it seems, inserts himself and his crew between the woman, the man and the midwife. The sensation generated by this approach is a cross between intimacy and invasion, a blurring of the boundary between the public and the private.
The camera in this film is never timid: during the childbirth, for example, the vagina of the woman is shown, neither hidden by the prude technique of shadows or some draping of the sheet. In an earlier scene when the water breaks, and Sean removes the pants of Martha, the camera never wavers in a half-fontal scene of the woman. In many other scenes, LaBeouf goes frontal as well, or, in some, displays an abundant mound of pubic hair.
From the breakdown of privacy insofar as the narrative is concerned, it is but a short walk to an unbridled confrontation with self, and with other individuals who come in between guilt and grief.
Brave is the actor who finds himself or herself in the middle of this kind of plot; braver still is the actor who the person becomes to tell the story of women breaking apart while the world around them remains stolid and sound.
Pieces of a Woman is fated to have daunting actors who not only wear their hearts on their sleeves but also break those hearts and other hearts in their pursuit of life. The film has all the traits of a traditional filmmaking: linear narrative, lucid plot, a clean and clear cinematography, even lush music. But what it lacks in edginess, it more than makes up for events that gradually, majestically unfold. Pieces of a Woman has, I’d like to emphasize, employed the most startlingly honest and visceral performers.
As the woman who feels she has failed the test of motherhood, Vanessa Kirby is taut from the start. She seems to have considered giving birth the most natural and, therefore, the easiest function of a woman. When that is thwarted, she loses her hold on what is at the core of her good person—a woman who has her own voice. Her woman sees herself as only being completed by a child that we wonder what will ever make her happy other than giving birth. When Vanessa Kirby delivers that old line, “This is my body,” she is wracked with such violence that the battlecry sounds hers alone.
Shia LaBeouf is unrecognizable and it is not because he has this unkempt long beard. He is this construction worker who is in a relationship with an executive. He cries terribly because he is not articulate enough to go into a more decent explanation of what he expects from a relationship. His Sean could have been just pathetic but when we see his tears, we know those are for the daughter he will never see again.
Making the extracinematic news, however, is the comeback of Ellen Burstyn. Even for those who do not know her from that brilliant turn in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (which won her the Oscar Best Actress in 1975), audiences will surely sit up and ask who this grand lady is.
Burstyn’s fans will not be disappointed: in a small party in her house, Burstyn as Elizabeth encourages Martha, her daughter, to file a case against the midwife who delivered her baby. Kirby’s voice as Martha starts to boom (Kirby has a huge voice) but Burstyn’s Elizabeth would not be intimidated by any voice. She then recalls how she was born and how, in an impoverished home with a tough mother, she survived. With the face of Kirby after the explosion gone, the camera has only the face of Burstyn. We are looking at this dowager. She does not froth in the mouth, for that would be so crass; she just stares back at the impervious camera with her imperious look, the tears welling up but we know weeping is not in her list. Burstyn goes on, with no gestures. It takes awhile for us to notice that everyone is gone. We could not care less if all the characters have gone to the moon—we are loving the character of Burstyn to the moon and back.
Talk of ensemble acting, this film has a real one. Before the Burstyn scene, all the leads and support are gathered in a room the design of which enables them to move outside the inner circle created by the dining table. Without the benefit of obvious cutting, the camera turns around and around, catching an actor passing behind another actor, seemingly eavesdropping on a furtive glance, hunting for a giveaway from anyone of them. It is a mise-en-scène made lovelier by a team of actors all keyed up to fulfil the other technical aspects of filmmaking.
There are talks of nominations for Kirby and especially for Burstyn. If she is nominated for Best Supporting Actress, Burstyn will be the oldest Oscar nominee by April. But I do not understand why people are talking of age. Ellen Burstyn is ageless and peerless at this point in her career.
Now streaming on Netflix, Pieces of a Woman is a 2020 film directed by Kornél Mundruczó, from a screenplay by Kata Wéber. It stars also Molly Parker, Sarah Snook, Iliza Shlesinger, Benny Safdie, and Jimmie Fails. Martin Scorsese serves as an executive producer. The film is said to be directly related to Mundruczó and Wéber’s 2018 stageplay of the same name.