Amazing Vanessa Kirbyen in perinatal mourning in Kornél Mundruczó’s new film

Pieces of Woman est le nouveau drame de Kornél Mundruczó (Delta, White God, Jupiter’s Moon), recently released on Netflix. Awarded at the Venice Film Festival, it tells the story of a couple bruised by the loss of their child during its birth.

“– I promised my daughter that she would inaugurate this bridge. – The one who is not yet born? – Exact !“. From the first minutes of the film, the tone is set. Sean Carson (Shia Labeouf) is agitated on the site of a bridge that he is building with his team in Boston. The sky is gray, it It’s already cold for a month of September and the future father expresses his joy about the birth of his approaching daughter.His girlfriend, Martha (Vanessa Kirby), celebrates her departure on maternity leave with his colleagues in the office. Later, the young woman signs the papers for a new car donated by her mother (Ellen Burstyn). “She bought a mini van to hijack me“Sean groans in front of his amused companion. The couple are united, happy, seem invincible. The foregrounds of Pieces of a woman blur the tracks of a future drama, which however does not take long to arrive.

From the beginning of the film, the tension rises dramatically, with the first contraction of Martha who wants to give birth at home. A long twenty-minute sequence shot deploys a particularly effective emotional lift. The events follow one another: their midwife Barbara is busy, another takes her place, the contractions intensify, the couple kiss, the baby’s head appears. The camera wanders from room to room in this apartment with warm and warm colors. She does not film so much the body of this woman who gives birth, but the faces, the expressions of the characters: the joy and the pain of the mother, the tenderness and the anxiety of the father, the benevolence then the fear of the midwife. . And then there is the link between the future parents, so well captured by the images of hands at the same time mixed up, caressed and abandoned.

This sequence shot is the strength of this entry that is gripping by the throat. The spectator is drawn into the bustle of birth, the anguish of its bad unfolding and a wave of sadness as soon as the ambulance sirens sound and end the scene.

Apart from this startling start, it is especially the game of Vanessa Kirby that is the strength of the film. Her character, Martha, suffers in silence. She wants to forget and erase everything in order to mourn. Her mother and her partner express their pain and want “that someone pay for this atrocity “. Sean doesn’t try to understand his wife’s pain so much. She is considered crazy in this environment which is agitated and wants redress. Dressed in red and not in black, Martha is the only one to wander like a lost soul, locked in her silence. She swims against the tide.

Known for her role as Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth in The Crown, Vanessa Kirby is a thousand miles from the register of the spoiled princess she has interpreted. She embodies here with great accuracy this martyr character, emptied of his essence. A role rewarded by the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 2020.

Month after month, the characters’ descent into hell is depicted on the menu. But with the exception of Martha, the other protagonists lack relief and depth, like the second part of the film. The husband plays his role of virile, violent man, who very quickly finds comfort in the arms of another. The mother, rich, wants to settle everything with a checkbook.

How to get up after such an ordeal, after the loss of a child? Is it absolutely necessary that someone pay for this death, probably involuntary? These are the questions that revolve around people for almost an hour and a half. If the subject is strong, the plot is slow and the outcome predictable.

If you’re still hesitant to watch Pieces of a Woman, we’ll give you some context. pic.twitter.com/arFeij2VcO

— Netflix France (@NetflixFR) January 15, 2021

Genre : Drama

Director : Kornél Mundruczó

Actors: Vanessa Kirby, Shia LaBeouf, Ellen Burstyn

Pays : American, Canadian, Hungarian

Duration : 2h06

Exit : January 7, 2021

Distributor : Netflix

Synopsis : Living in Boston, Martha and Sean Carson are preparing to become parents. But the couple’s life is turned upside down when the young woman gives birth at home and loses her baby, despite the assistance of a midwife, soon prosecuted for negligence. Martha must then learn to grieve, while enduring an intrusive mother and an increasingly irritable husband. But he must also attend the trial of the midwife, whose reputation is now destroyed. Pieces of a Woman is an intimate and heartbreaking chronicle of the life of a couple, and the heartbreaking portrait of a woman who must learn to mourn.

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