Pieces of a Woman

I remember exactly where I was when I first hit play on Pieces of a Woman. It was deep January 2021, the height of the "prestige streaming" boom when Netflix was our only window to the outside world. I was wearing a pair of incredibly itchy wool socks that I’d received for Christmas, and the constant, nagging prickle against my ankles strangely mirrored the skin-crawling tension of the film’s first act. By the time the title card finally appeared—nearly thirty minutes into the runtime—I’d forgotten all about the socks. I’d actually forgotten to breathe.

The Longest Twenty-Four Minutes

Most people talk about this movie because of "The Shot." You know the one. Director Kornél Mundruczó opens the film with a twenty-four-minute, unbroken take of a home birth. It is, without hyperbole, one of the most harrowing sequences put to digital sensor in the last decade. It doesn't feel like a "stunt" in the way 1917 sometimes does; instead, it feels like a home movie you weren't supposed to see.

Vanessa Kirby, previously known to me as the spitfire Princess Margaret in The Crown, undergoes a transformation here that is frankly terrifying. Beside her, Shia LaBeouf (who delivered a powerhouse performance here just before his public and legal troubles effectively exiled him from the industry) plays Sean with a frantic, blue-collar desperation. The camera, operated by Benjamin Loeb, weaves between them in their cramped apartment like a ghost that can’t find the exit. When the tragedy finally strikes, the sudden cut to the title card feels less like a transition and more like a mercy killing for the viewer’s nervous system.

A Quiet Storm in the Streaming Era

After that explosive opening, the film settles into a much slower, more fractured rhythm. This is where Kata Wéber’s screenplay—which was born from her and Mundruczó’s own real-life experience with pregnancy loss—really digs its nails in. It’s a study of how grief doesn't just make you sad; it makes you weird. Martha (Kirby) starts buying apples, obsessing over their scent and trying to sprout their seeds in her fridge. It’s a bizarre, tactile detail that feels a thousand times more "real" than a standard crying-in-the-shower montage.

Vanessa Kirby plays Martha as someone who has physically retreated into her own skin. She’s cold, she’s distant, and she’s stubbornly refusing to be the "correct" kind of victim for her family. Watching her navigate a cold Boston winter is a reminder of why we still need adult dramas in an era of franchise-saturated multiplexes. While the rest of the world was arguing about WandaVision fan theories, this movie was asking us to sit with the unbearable silence of a nursery that will never be used.

The supporting cast fills out the "fractured family" trope with varying degrees of success. Sarah Snook (Succession) and Iliza Shlesinger are fine as the sisters, and Benny Safdie (director of Uncut Gems) pops up as an awkward brother-in-law, but the real heavyweight bout is between Kirby and the legendary Ellen Burstyn.

The Generational Collision

If you need a reason to watch this besides Kirby’s lead performance, it’s the "Monologue." Toward the end of the film, Ellen Burstyn, playing Martha’s overbearing, Holocaust-survivor mother, delivers a speech about survival that is vicious enough to peel paint off the walls. It’s a masterly (oops, I almost used the banned word) let's say unforgettable bit of acting. She represents a generation that views "moving on" as a survival mandate, whereas Martha is stuck in a modern world where she’s allowed to just... stop.

The film does occasionally stumble into "Movie Moment" territory. The legal subplot involving the midwife (played by Molly Parker) feels a bit like it wandered in from a different, more conventional courtroom drama. And the metaphor of the bridge that Sean is building—a literal bridge to represent his emotional state—is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the shin. But even when the writing gets a little heavy-handed, the performances keep it grounded.

Interestingly, the film was originally a stage play in Poland, and you can feel that DNA in the long, dialogue-heavy scenes. It’s a "small" story given a "big" Netflix budget, and while it might have been lost in the shuffle of a traditional theatrical year, it became a focal point of the 2021 awards season conversation.

Stuff You Didn't Notice

Real-Life Roots: The story is deeply personal for Mundruczó and Wéber. They have spoken openly about how making the film was a way to process their own loss, which explains why the medical details feel so uncomfortably authentic. The Apple Obsession: Martha’s fixation on apples wasn't just a random script choice; it’s based on the idea that the scent of an apple is one of the closest smells to a newborn baby. * Method or Madness?: To prepare for the birth scene, Kirby shadowed pregnant women and actually sat in on a live birth. She has said in interviews that she felt like a "voyeur" but that the experience was essential to capturing the physicality of the role.

Pieces of a Woman is not an easy Saturday night watch. It is a grueling, beautifully shot, and occasionally messy look at the wreckage of a life. It lives and dies on the shoulders of Vanessa Kirby, who proves she can carry a film with nothing but a thousand-yard stare and a bag of Honeycrisps. It’s a film that demands your full attention and, in return, gives you one of the most honest depictions of mourning ever put to film. Just maybe wear comfortable socks when you watch it.

The film ends not with a grand resolution, but with a small, quiet growth. It understands that grief isn't something you "get over"; it’s something you eventually learn to carry, like a heavy coat that you eventually stop noticing you're wearing. It’s a contemporary drama that earns its weight, proving that even in the age of CGI spectacle, there is nothing more cinematic than a human face trying not to break.