Pieces of a Woman (2020) * *

 

Directed by:  Kornel Mondruczo

Starring:  Vanessa Kirby, Shia Labeouf, Ellen Burstyn, Molly Parker, Sarah Snook, Benny Safdie, Iliza Shlesinger

The first thirty minutes of Pieces of a Woman makes dramatic promises on which the rest of the film doesn't deliver.    The tense opening moments of Martha (Kirby) undergoing the excruciating pain of a home birth with her partner Sean (Labeouf) and replacement midwife Eva (Parker) trying their damndest to deliver the baby successfully give way to another ninety minutes of silence, moping, self-destructive behavior, and too much internalization of grief to be interesting,

I know people process grief in different ways.   The baby dies shortly after delivery.   Weeks pass.  The midwife is soon brought up on criminal charges of negligence even though Martha is reluctant to participate in such a flimsy case.   Maybe there will be a courtroom drama?   Not really.   Only ten minutes of screen time are devoted to the trial at all, including an unconvincing statement by Martha to the court exonerating Eva for the death of her child.   Instead, we get the whole "grieving on the inside" drama where Martha walks around like a zombie numbed from the pain and Sean deals with his grief by looking and sounding intense all the time.   Martha and Sean drift apart, each engaging in different versions of self-destructive behavior.   Sean relapses into drug and alcohol abuse coupled with demands that Martha sexually please him even though she is so not in the mood.   Martha's mother Elizabeth (Burstyn) dislikes Sean, partly because he's a working-class grunt and mostly because of his past.   Who is to say Martha and Sean would've made it even if the baby had lived?   There is so little chemistry there you wonder how they got together in the first place.

Internal grief isn't cinematic.  A little of it goes a long way.   Granted, the internalization of mourning isn't uncommon, but it doesn't make for thrilling viewing.   Sean eventually lashes out with violence, and it is all the more frustrating for him when Martha doesn't fight back.   Shia Labeouf has seemingly cornered the market on characters driven by intensity and internal rage much the same way Sam Rockwell has the monopoly on racists who decide to stop being racist.   Vanessa Kirby was wonderful in the first two seasons of The Crown as Princess Margaret.   She is more muted here, mostly because that is how Martha is written.   Martha is only allowed to suggest complex emotions without fully expressing them and it robs the viewer and movie of a satisfactory payoff. 

Ellen Burstyn's Elizabeth undergoes problems of her own dealing with her age and the onset of dementia.   She has one terrific scene where she urges Martha to snap out of her doldrums and fight back against the pain which has consumed her.   It will likely be enough to secure Burstyn another Oscar nomination at age 87, and she can still pack a wallop.   There has been talk of a nomination for Kirby, but what would the clips be?   Martha stomping around town like she's mad at the sidewalk?  I'm not blaming Kirby, just the way she is utilized.   I would've liked to have seen more about Eva and how she is processing the possibility of going to prison and losing her livelihood over something she had no control over.   Pieces of a Woman has a more powerful story locked up inside, yearning to be freed, but instead it is a prisoner of its own self-imposed dramatic limitations.