Movie Review: 'Pieces of a Woman' One of Netflix Best Originals

Pieces of a Woman may be the best Netflix movie of 2020. That’s a shockingly short list however as Netflix has been rather slipshod when it comes to their original pieces in 2020. Movies such as Hillbilly Elegy, The Trial of the Chicago 7 and The Devil All the Time have been hit and miss fare with Hillbilly Elegy as a significant miss. Movies such as the remake of The Boys in the Band and the fresh comedy The 40 Year old Version have been highlights but until now, the company had yet to produce anything nearly as transcendent as 2019’s incredible Marriage Story.

Pieces of a Woman, I am sure, is not the movie they are counting on for the awards season but it should be. This thought provoking, emotional and often brutally frank drama about a woman losing a baby and the fallout from that tragedy is an incredibly engaging and engrossing drama. In the lead role, actress Vanessa Kirby delivers a powerhouse performance that left me breathless as it played out.

Martha (Kirby) and Sean (Shia LeBeouf) are an unmarried couple about to have a baby together. They’ve decided on a home birth, relying on a midwife to bring their child into the world. We join them just as Martha is going into labor. Their original midwife is not available and is replaced at the last minute by Eva (Molly Parker). Things appear to be going smoothly until the baby stops breathing for some unknown reason. Miscommunication between the midwife and the couple delays the calling of 911 and though we see Martha hold her baby, this doesn’t last long.

The death of the child is the inciting incident of a dramatic story that will tear apart the lives of Martha and Sean as well as Eva, though her story is mostly in the background of Pieces of a Woman. The main story here is Martha who must navigate the choppy waters of losing a child, a collapsing relationship with her lover, and a troubled relationship with her mother, Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn) that is fraught in ways many mother/daughter relationships are.

The clear influence on the story of Pieces of a Woman are dramas of John Cassavetes, specifically those starring Cassavetes’ then wife, Gena Rowlands. The harsh language, the terse, honest exchanges and the forceful drama are Cassavetes’ staples and they are well on display here in the work of director Kornel Madruzco, screenwriter Kata Weber as well as in the performance of Vanessa Kirby who doesn't mimic Rowlands, but you can sense the influence or at least the kind of forceful female performance that makes one like which Kirby is delivering possible.

Shia LeBeouf as well might seem well at home in one of Cassavetes’ version of a kitchen sink drama. LeBeouf’s volcanic tendencies make him an unpredictable and endlessly watchable performer. It is genuinely exciting watching LeBeouf demonstrate warmth and love and yet remain this unpredictable wild card performer, capable of making you cry and terrifying you with his unpredictable temper. He makes all of this range of emotion somehow feel organic, as if from a person you’ve met in real life.

Vanessa Kirby however, is the revelation of Pieces of a Woman. Like LeBeouf, her energy is unpredictable though less knowingly manic. Kirby finds the perfect mix of coping and grief, of wearing the mask of normalcy in public and pure despair away from the world. It’s not hard to imagine that this range of emotions will be familiar to those who’ve suffered in the way Martha does in Pieces of a Woman and Kirby is brilliant at giving those emotions a place to be recognized and empathized with.

Pieces of a Woman can be a tough watch but it’s worth it. These characters are mesmerizing and the story is one that aches to be told. The relationships are remarkably familiar and harrowing in a fashion you can recognize from your own life, among family and friends who’ve broken apart and are unable to reconnect. Trauma is a learning experience, it never goes away, you make it part of you and learn to cope with it. That’s the simple truth of Pieces of a Woman and the simplicity of that message is both oddly comforting and heartbreaking.

Pieces of a Woman will have a brief theatrical release on December 25th and arrive on Netflix on January 7th.