Vanessa Kirby grapples with grief in hollow 'Pieces of a Woman'

By Al Alexander
For The Patriot Ledger

     It’s somewhat fitting that the dead-baby drama “Pieces of a Woman” feels like pieces of a movie that like its protagonist is completely falling apart. It’s a story in search of a through line as it fumbles through its inherent darkness toward an utterly unearned happy ending. That it’s at all watchable is due entirely to unsung star Vanessa Kirby, best known as Tom Cruise's foil in the last “Mission: Impossible” entry.

       As a Boston-based professional with a manipulative mother (Ellen Burstyn) and jittery townie boyfriend (Shia LaBeouf), Kirby’s Martha initially presents herself as a woman who seems to have achieved everything she’d dreamt of, including a baby due any day. That’s where “Pieces” begins, in a state of bliss and possibility. Then, the bottom falls out in the short amount of time between Martha’s water breaking and surviving an extremely difficult delivery by an over-her-head midwife (Molly Parker). When the child emerges from Martha’s womb, all seems ideal. Then in just minutes the infant goes into cardiac arrest. How and why could this happen? And who’s to blame?

PIECES OF A WOMAN: Vanessa Kirby as Martha

      That’s the razor thin jumping-off point for a film intent on exploring how such a tragedy erodes the soul of a pampered woman who up until now had never experienced adversity -- a woman just like Kata Wéber, the movie’s writer and partner of its director, Kornél Mundruczó. For them, “Pieces” is both autobiographical and an offbeat attempt at a catharsis. Good for them. But what they define as therapy fails to stir much empathy in us. I suspect that’s because their story is so personal and painful they are understandably timid about revealing too much of their obviously damaged souls.

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     It always feels like they’re holding back, afraid to venture too far down the road of their despair. And it’s for that reason “Pieces” crumbles into a missed opportunity to touch upon the destructiveness of grief. Yes, we see Martha experiencing what used to be described as a nervous breakdown as she checks out of reality and retreats deep into a safe place with only just enough room for her battered psyche. Left out is her flustered partner, LaBeouf’s Sean, a bridge-builder by day and an unintentional demolitions expert at night when he and Martha can no longer find a span across the chasm erupting between them.

PIECES OF A WOMAN: Ellen Burstyn as Elizabeth

     Needlessly cheering on their fissures is Burstyn’s Elizabeth, the type of controlling mother who wastes not a second attempting to further the wedge between Martha and Sean, who Mom sees as a blue-collar loser unworthy of her brilliant, beautiful daughter. What ensues is rife with resentment, bitterness and a need to point fingers. It’s a great exercise -- if you’re an actor. And the three leads milk it for all it’s worth with enough scenery chewing to feed an army. It’s quality stuff, too, thus the reason Kirby and Burstyn are deep in the Oscar conversations.

     And what a pleasure to watch them and LaBeouf go after each other in one intense scene after another. But what they and the film lack is any discernible purpose. In other words, what’s the point? Is it that loss by death is ruinous to its survivors? Or is it that tragedy doesn’t cause turmoil, it reveals it? It’s a little bit of both and utterly rote. There’s nothing here that hasn’t already been explored extensively in deeper, better movies. What saves it are the fine performances via Kirby’s outstanding interpretations of a woman who’s lost not only her will to live, but to care, down to the sharp but underdeveloped turns by Illia Schlesinger and filmmaker Ben Safdie (“Good Times”) as Martha’s more together sister and brother-in-law. 

PIECES OF A WOMAN: Shia LeBeouf as Sean and Vanessa Kirby as Martha

     They hold your gaze as well as your attention. At least they do until you suddenly realize their story is going nowhere interesting. It also doesn’t help that it’s set in Boston but was shot almost entirely in the Bay State town of Montreal, home of the hated Canadiens! Is that pucked up, or what? The killer is that through no fault of Mundruczó (the terrific “White Dog”) he can never top his film’s nail-biting opening 25 minutes as we watch in real time as a joyous event (the birth of a child) turns tragic at the snap of the fingers. In those moments of classic cinéma vérité, Mundruczó perfectly illustrates the fragility and precariousness of life. It’s shocking, unsettling and unnerving.

      From there, he and Weber have nowhere to go but down the rabbit hole of banality. Yes, it’s incredibly sad when a baby dies. But it’s just as sad when such a death is exploited as a means for artistic expression, especially when the result is so devoid of genuine feeling, more frustrating than heartbreaking, and ultimately, lifeless.

Movie review

Pieces of a Woman

(R for sexual content, brief drug use, language, graphic nudity.) Cast includes Vanessa Kirby, Shia LaBeouf, Ellen Burstyn and Molly Parker. In theaters Dec. 30 before it begins streaming Jan. 7 on Netflix. Grade: B-