Pieces of a Woman

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

Pieces of a Woman (2020) follows a woman who struggles to deal with the aftermath of a traumatic home birth. This film was a really beautiful film with a lot of heart and emotional. Such a brutally realistic portrayal of grief and I'm very happy i watched it.

I loved the cinematography for this film! The colour palettes were subtle yet very visually pleasing and all the shots were framed really well. The camera panning was good and I liked how it tracked the characters, especially in this birth scene. The extreme close-ups used helped to convey the characters' emotions to the max and were very effective!

The score was super melancholic throughout the whole film and immediately set the tone well. It was somewhat basic at points but I still found that it added a lot to the film and didn't really need to be 'unique' per say.

All the performances were strong, with some well written and intense dialogue. The characters felt so real. Vanessa Kirby was phenomenal as the lead and her acting during the birth scene was unreal! I thought Ellen Burstyn was great in her role too, as she always is! My only criticism is that I'd have liked to have seen more of Benny Safdie's character! Also, I wanted to mention that the casting of the sister was accurate and a great choice!

The film had strong themes of grief, and I found it to be brutally realistic in addressing such themes. I'm sure this is a movie many people, unfortunately, can relate to. Also, I loved the apple metaphor and it was beautifully addressed during the court scene, which was probably my favourite scene of the movie!

Lastly, the pacing was slow and steady, but managed to keep me engaged and interest through the whole duration! I was completely drawn in to these people's lives, and it left me wanting more!

I almost never watch movies like these -- mega-drama releases during Oscar season. But in my first year reviewing on Letterboxd, movies like this appear so consistently in the "Popular with Friends" feed I find myself drawn to them.

And after forcing my self to watch PIeces of a Woman knowing I'd struggle, I think I'm going with my gut next time around.

I don't really have much to add to what's been said before. The birth scene is heart wrenching. The acting is phenomenal. Shia Lebouf's performance was so excellent I kept wanting to slap myself in the face reminding myself that he's a complete asshole.

But the bulk of the movie after the first act is just painful to sit through. Not because of the depressing subject matter. Nothing really gels.

Overall it felt like a jigsaw puzzle that was half completed.

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.

Almost too traumatic to watch at times, particularly the birth scene at the beginning with the impending tragedy.

After this, you find yourself watching a kind of ticking time bomb. I wasn't sure what was going to happen, was it going to end in violence, more tragedy, the tension almost seeped through the screen.

I was not aware of. Vanessa Kirby before this movie, what an outstanding performance she delivered, she left absolutely nothing in the rehearsal room and gave a performance, as powerful as I can remember. She was very well supported by the cast around her.

Grief must never be swept under the carpet, this movie, as hard as it is to watch at times, delivers a very important message.