Directed by : Kornel Mundruczo

How can I give this pain to someone else? Someone who has already suffered? And I know she would not want that. At all. That is not why my daughter came into this world for the time that she did.


Spoilers ahead.. 

Martha (Vanessa Kirby) and Sean (Shia LaBeouf) decide to give birth to their child at home when on a certain day they call their midwife who couldn't be available and sends Eva (Molly Parker) as a replacement qualified enough. Everything is looking fine until just moments after birth of the child, Eva realizes the baby's body is turning blue and eventually leads to death. What follows after that, is a long emptiness and alien kind behavior Martha goes through while dealing with all the relationships and also the Eva court case who is by Martha's mother Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn) held responsible for the untimely death of Martha's newly born baby. 

In the starting scene when a worker at bridge asks Sean who is Martha, he replies 'She is fine, she is always fine', the tone suggests maybe this ain't a happy couple and the child might be a way of them getting closer. Even the conversations or ways Sean tries to calm Martha down when she is feeling the contractions and getting moody needing distractions gives similar vibes. 

The excellent first act involves long 30 mins sequence at Sean-Martha place, where things seem normal when Eva comes and initially checks how the baby is doing, but the tension increases later when Eva feels the heartbeat of the baby isn't normal. We feel the same kind of relief Eva feels when the birth happens successfully only to see that the baby ends up living in this world for barely few mins.

The 2nd and final act are disappointing, half of the blame goes to how high the film starts with, and other has to do with the writing, just gets little melodramatic and cliched than I would had preferred. Vanessa Kirby however with her performance keeps you interested till the end. She beautifully portrays the emotions of a broken mother, mostly through silence, all her reactions to how her family tries to keep in touch or her changing equation with her husband and her decision to let her dead baby's body been used for medical institution. She has 2 outbursts, one in court and other with her family at her Mom's place, enjoyed both specially the latter one. You can feel her pain every time she is walking and a family with a kid is around or in train. The only time she feels at peace is when she is trying to use apple seeds to try and grow apples, which is also the last scene where her daughter is climbing to get the apple suggesting maybe finally Martha has moved on and got over that painful loss. 

Shia LaBeauof on the other hand didn't quite work for me, maybe it was the cliched route his character takes in the 2nd act involving drugs, liquor and sleeping with Martha's cousin. He does have some moments where he is mourning at the loss, but he is more on Martha's mom side wanting the midwife o suffer. Ellen Burstyn plays a controlling mother and has one very good long monologue where she tries to make Martha know how she herself fighted her way out of a tough situation in her childhood. The cousin angle I felt was totally off-putting, infact the whole case against mid-wife wasn't required either, when it was clear that it was just one of rare mishaps and not something done intentionally. I would had rather preferred more of Martha coping with the emptiness and the void she was feeling post the loss. 

Construction of bridge is used as a good reference to show the time passed by, the initial scene has Sean jokingly saying that he wants the construction end by the time his daughter enters the world, and after some months when bridge is indeed complete, Sean and Martha have completely fallen apart.

Pieces of a Woman is more of a film that's dominated by its super tense filled starting 30 mins and Vanessa Kirby's brilliant performance. 

My Rating : 6/10