Pieces of a Woman review: Vanessa Kirby deserves an Oscar for her role as a grieving mother in Netfix film

This raw domestic drama explores what it is like to lose a newborn
Charlotte O'Sullivan8 January 2021

Vanessa Kirby’s work in this intimate and scaldingly raw domestic drama rightly won her the best actress prize in Venice. She’s also tipped for the same at the Oscars. 

Thanks to The Crown and an ongoing role in the Mission Impossible franchise, the 32-year-old Londoner is already a global icon. Yet she continues to work with indie directors and she’s indifferent to the plush nooks of LA (she flat-shares in Tooting). I don’t mean to sound gushy, but what a woman.

When we first meet her Jewish American Martha, she’s a mother-to-be. Martha has Kim Gordon hair and paints her tatty fingernails black. She’s a cool rebel, even if she has a corporate job and a wealthy mum, Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn), who clearly detests Martha’s prole-ish partner, Sean (Shia LaBeouf).

None of that seems important, though, as Martha and Sean prepare for their baby’s arrival, at home. In a technically stunning single 30-minute take, the couple nuzzle each other and take direction from radiantly nervy midwife Eve (a sublime Molly Parker, just the right side of spooky). Martha burps and yowls and thinks the pain she’s experiencing is unbearable. And as the baby’s finally placed in her arms, Sean (a recovering alcoholic) looks ecstatic and relieved but also stricken. You can tell he’s wondering if he’ll be a good enough dad.

The film begins with a stunning 30-minute single take
Netflix

Then the little girl turns blue, and the real agony starts. Many movies revolve around the death of a child, but few have explored what it’s like to lose a newborn. Watching the increasingly unmoored Martha, some viewers will think, “She just needs to get pregnant again, that’ll help her move on.” Suffice to say, Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó extends infinite compassion towards individuals who would rather go to pieces than be rushed.

Though the central characters are mostly at odds, the script, by Mundruczo’s partner Kata Wéber and drawing on (but heavily fictionalising) the couple’s own experience, ensures everyone is sympathetic. Elizabeth, who wants Martha to sue Eve for negligence, delivers a goosebump-inducing speech about what it means to be a Holocaust survivor and the need for trauma victims to speak their truth.

Weber occasionally pushes her metaphors too hard and there are moments that feel purely melodramatic. The pieces don’t always match up. No matter. The fragments are fabulous.

Netflix, 129 minutes; 15.

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