Vanessa Kirby stole so many scenes in the first two seasons of The Crown, often overshadowing her co-star Claire Foy, who played the actual Queen of England. As the tragic (and later tragicomic) figure Princess Margaret, she was by turns charming, fashionable, jealous, and, as in Margaret’s real life, heartbroken and betrayed. I’d seen her previously in the short-lived BBC series The Hour, but didn’t recognize her when I saw her in 2020’s Mr. Jones or when she took on the role of Margaret.
Pieces of a Woman represents her critical breakthrough, as her command performance as a woman grieving the loss of a baby during a home birth gone awry earned her the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival in 2020, a Golden Globe nomination for the same, and, most likely, an Oscar nomination as well. The movie is uneven, and the resolution of the story feels more like fantasy than reality on multiple levels, but Kirby is a knockout in this role and makes this arduous film well worth the time investment.
Kirby plays Martha, a very pregnant woman whose husband, Sean (Shia LaBoeuf), is a blue-collar worker and clearly not respected by her mother (Ellen Burstyn). Martha and Sean have chosen a home birth, but their midwife isn’t available when labor begins, so they call another midwife their original one recommended. The new midwife, Eva (Molly Parker), seems a little overmatched when things start to go wrong, and after it seems like they’re out of the woods and their baby girl is born, she starts to turn blue and stops breathing. Martha and Sean are both left to grieve their loss, but both Sean and Martha’s mother become invested in the criminal case against Eva, pulling them away from Martha when she needs them, and the family dynamics become even more complicated when Martha’s cousin Suzanne (Sarah Snook) is the prosecuting attorney.
The film opens with its best scene, a 24-minute single-shot depiction of the labor, delivery, and death of the baby that is intense not just because you know how it’s going to end, but because it’s so slow relative to most films. This is a more detailed depiction of childbirth than you get in most films, and it’s only to the movie’s benefit, especially because it shows the physical labor (no pun intended) required of the mother and thus further underlines both the level of Martha’s anguish and the emotional distance she feels from everyone around her, including her husband, when their baby dies.
Kirby is just powerful in this role, even in grief; there’s no lower gear anywhere in the performance, regardless of the mood or situation. She’s especially good in scenes with her mother – and Burstyn, who seems unlikely to get an Oscar nod, is also excellent – who seems completely unable to understand her daughter in multiple conversations. She’s also good in scenes with LaBoeuf, who is … fine. He’s received praise for his performance, or at least did before FKA Twigs accused him of emotional and physical abuse; I couldn’t stand him in American Honey, either, and I just couldn’t find him credible here, but I concede that it’s difficult to separate the actor from the character in this case. At least here, we rarely see him without Kirby, who is very much the emotional center of the movie.
The ending, however, doesn’t live up to the previous 90-plus minutes. We end up in a courtroom, where the case is resolved with something out of Law & Order – well-acted, but, still, unrealistic and maudlin – that is an ostensible attempt to show the end of Martha’s emotional arc. I don’t buy it, because it’s not something we would see in the real world, and because Martha’s arc would have no real conclusion. My lay understanding of the psychology of grief is that it doesn’t go away; it may fade, or just be blunted by time, but it persists. That point leads me to wonder if the final scene is meant to be real, fantasy, or just ambiguous, which is something I’ll leave you to answer in the comments if you’re so inclined.
There’s more than enough in Pieces of a Woman to recommend it, even with the flawed ending and my personal distaste for LaBoeuf. The opening scene is masterful, and I imagine people will refer to it for years the way they did The Player‘s opening scene. Burstyn will probably miss out on what would be her seventh Oscar nomination, especially with Jodie Foster winning a Golden Globe for The Mauritanian, but she’s superb in a pivotal role, a better foil for Kirby in character and in ability. And, if nothing else has convinced you, watch it for Kirby, who may not win in a stacked Best Actress category, but did deliver one of the best performances of 2020.