OVP: Pieces of a Woman (2020)

Film: Pieces of a Woman (2020)

Stars: Vanessa Kirby, Shia LaBeouf, Ellen Burstyn, Molly Parker, Sarah Snook

Director: Kornel Mundruczo

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Vanessa Kirby)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We will announce my annual Top 10 lists on January 24th, and so for the next two weeks we'll basically be doing a 2020 release every single day as I begin to put the finishing touches on this year.  In normal years, this would be accompanied with a lot of Oscar predictions, but due to the Academy's ill-advised decision to move the date of the Oscars (and thus have a number of films in the coming weeks eligible, breaking with a nearly 90-year streak of confining themselves to the current calendar year), we are kind of riding blind when it comes to Oscar & the end-of-the-year titles.  That being said, one of the final films to sneak into 2020, which is now playing on Netflix, is definitely in the hunt for the acting categories: Pieces of a Woman, a harrowing mediation on grief, love, & loss when the unspeakable happens.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around three characters, and a fourth on the sidelines of their lives.  The movie opens with an extended sequence where Martha (Kirby) is giving birth in her home, with her construction worker husband Sean (LaBeouf) by her side.  Martha is having a home birth, and her substitute midwife Eva (Parker) is there to assist.  As the birth continues, it's clear that there is wrong with the child, and Eva gently asks Martha if she wants to go to the hospital.  Martha says "no," and the baby is born, but immediately after the child turns blue, going into cardiac arrest, and then dies.

The opening scene of this film is brutal, like watching horror movie, and surely what the movie will be most noted for due to its uninterrupted camera & the way that it unfolds.  You understand pretty quickly that this will not go well, but the suspense is still there as to how it won't go well, and all of the actors, particularly Parker, play their parts well.  The problem for the movie is that it never really understands the moment correctly for the rest of the film, that these figures who are strangers to us remain strangers the rest of the picture.

Kirby is a very good actress (anyone who saw her on The Crown can attest to such), but like a lot of performers who excel at playing outward, extroverted figures, her attempts at making Martha small result in making her unknowable.  We know she's a wealthy woman, but we get no idea of why she has a thing for Sean (is the sex just that good, because they have nothing in common?), or what her ambitions were to be a mother or in her job...she is basically an empty vessel, and that doesn't work for the film's beats.  We need to know what the "pieces" of this woman are so we can marvel when they're put back together.  Kirby could get a nomination, as could Ellen Burstyn (who gets one killer monologue that screams "nominate me!") but without Martha as a holistic center, the film itself becomes shallow, and aided by an overbearing Howard Shore score, it never lives up to the promise of that opening scene.