Pieces of a Woman

It's a well acted tragic story that starts off excellently, but falls apart bit by bit the longer it goes until it ends on a whimper, as if the story got tired. Vanessa Kirby is equal parts excellent, and yet underacted in a sort of apathetic manner, where it began to hurt the story itself because her behavior was not shown to have anything underlying it, but her surface level was her entire level. Shia was excellent, as was the Mother. The film is very much in the style of Hungarian films, as the director is, and I say this in the way that this film could and would have been shot as a Hungarian film and played out exactly the same, if it had not been North American. In fact, it feels like an American adaptation of an existing Hungarian film, but this is it. The tone of the film jerks around somewhat, going with hard, every day realism, with odd smatterings of symbolism that just don't mesh well and come up like worn down speed humps on your drive, so instead of you getting seamless symbolism, they are stark and you are slapped aware of them when they show up. The dialogue is very good and realistic, except for a few instances where they get speechy and you start to fall out of the immersion because of it. The cinematography is very great, and the music works well. I think with some tweaks this could have been a great, even excellent movie, but what we got is a hampered result.

This is a film that will be on my mind for a while. It's hard to enjoy a movie that's incredibly depressing, but Pieces of a Woman is one that I got behind. All I feel like doing is raving about how good this movie truly is, but I need to stress that I probably won't recommend it to most average viewers. Having just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, Pieces of a Woman took me on a journey that I wasn't prepared for in the slightest. Here are my overall thoughts on this very challenging film.

The premise of this film alone kind of ruins the experience to dive into it in detail, so I'll simply say that this film is about Martha (Vanessa Kirby), a woman who has to cope with a devastating loss. This loss drives a huge steak in the love between her and Sean (Shia LaBeouf), so much so that their relationship may not work out. Pieces of a Woman begins with an absolutely gut-wrenching 30 minutes that sets the rest of the film in motion. The opening of the film made me smile and it felt sweet, but the quick descent into heartbreak just left my jaw on the floor. In retrospect, this movie isn't for anyone who is looking to genuinely enjoy a film, but rather an experience that utilizes filmmaking and performances in the best ways possible.

I've been a Shia LaBeouf fan for as long as I can remember, so his fantastic and raw performance here didn't surprise me in the least. He's been great in everything he's done over the last few years and I can't wait to see more indie turns from him. Now, Vanessa Kirby on the other hand... I've seen her in big films like Mission: Impossible - Fallout and Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw, but I've never seen her sink her teeth into a role like this. Maybe there's a smaller film that I need to seek out that she's done in the past, but this may be the best performance she'll ever give. From her first moments on-screen to where she ends up by the end, her range here was outstanding. I felt the emotion that she was conveying and I broke down in a certain courtroom scene.

Now, where I feel the one imperfect aspect of this film lies, is in the fact that the first 30 minutes are so incredibly moving, that the rest of the movie does seem to move at a much, much slower pace. Once the big moment occurs, Pieces of a Woman almost teeters on being a little too melodramatic and slow. With that said, the camerawork by Benjamin Loeb is a character in itself. Incredibly long takes bring you on a journey themselves and it took the overall story to another level for me. Having done the cinematography for the film Mandy, I guess that shouldn't have surprised me so much. It's very clear that Loeb has a keen eye on what will work for a specific film and what won't. I'm eagerly awaiting his next project.

In the end, Pieces of a Woman is probably the most challenging movie I've watched all year. Not only due to how depressing the story itself is, but how slowly the film moves along. It asks you to be patient and really dive into the emotional core, which I ended up finding incredibly powerful overall, even though the subject matter was almost too much to take in at times. The graphic nature of how certain things are displayed almost had me in tears alone. This is a film that doesn't hold back. It tells you the honest truth about situations like this and I found that very powerful. Not many viewers will be able to sit through this movie and want to call it great, but that's exactly what I believe it to be. A great, great piece of drama, even if it's brutally hard to watch.

The screenplay and the resulting formal structure of the movie left me a bit puzzled. Did they try to parallel the experience of this young woman, surpassing a deep life crisis after a miscarriage, on the formal level and the structure of the movie? The film never recovers from its strong first 30 min, after this you have the feeling it breaks into pieces, like the life of this young woman itself. Sequences seem fractured and shattered, not really motivated or combined in a convincing way. Dialogue and acting often seems loosely improvised and unconnected. La Beouf's part for example, the most unconvincingly motivated character for me, suddenly loosing any connection, vanishing out of sight. But that's exactly the way the grieving mother must have felt it herself! Maybe they did that intentionally to give us the feeling of loss, pain, anger and emotional estrangement this woman is going through. Strong supporting acts by Ellen Burstyn and Molly Parker. But the movie's core and center is Vanessa Kirby here, giving a breathtaking performance, she carries this film almost alone. In the end it doesn't leave you frustrated, it seems there's enough hope left for a new beginning in life.

There are some nice moments late into the running time of "Pieces of a Woman," but you may not think the payoff of those scenes is worth what you had to sit through to get to them.

As anyone who knows about this movie already also knows, the opening is a lengthy and grueling one-shot scene of a homebirth gone wrong. Actually, that's not how the movie opens. There are a few brief scenes establishing the principal characters, namely Martha (Vanessa Kirby), her husband Sean (Shia LaBeouf), and Martha's domineering mom Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn). These scenes quickly convey the dysfunctional family dynamic between this trio, and mostly warns the audience that all of these people are going to be pretty miserable to be around. The film then delivers on that promise. After the birthing scene, which wasn't as unbearable as I thought it would be aside from the vomit anxiety induced by watching Vanessa Kirby burp and almost throw up for 20 minutes, this movie becomes nothing but a mashup of marital misery, and reinforces my belief that you can have empathy for damaged people and understand how they became the way they are, but still not want to be around them.

Martha finds some solace and healing very late in the movie, providing Kirby with a chance to convey an emotion beyond hollowed-out bitterness. Burstyn is masterful and has a monologue that has Oscar clip written all over it. LaBeouf is hopeless, as he always is. He's a truly disgusting actor and he only plays disgusting characters and it's a relief when he abandons his wife and leaves the film. I only wish he'd done it sooner.

Kirby is being lauded for her performance, but she's limited by the material. We don't know anything about Martha before her trauma and anything we learn about her after is filtered through that lens. She's a character defined by her tragedy, and the movie makes it hard to care about her beyond the abstract care one would feel for any random person in similar circumstances.

Grade: B

Overall, this movie is pretty decent. I have to say that I expected a bit more but in the end I wasn't really disappointed. Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf were both great but there were moments in both of their performances that were just a little bit off. The highlight of the film has got to be its opening scene which is about 27 minutes long. This scene was absolutely incredible and highly salute them for their work. After that the movie goes up and down over and over again. It's meant to be sad and heartbreaking but I just didn't REALLY feel that when I was watching.