Competing priorities nearly undo Pieces of a Woman, which begins as an intimate exploration of grief, expands into a diffuse family drama, and builds to a contrived courtroom climax. Written by Kata Weber and directed by Kornel Mondruczo, who previously collaborated on the harrowing White God, the movie opens with an ambitious, 23-minute home-birthing sequence (nearly shot in a single take), in which a couple (Vanessa Kirby and Shia Labeouf) begin the evening anticipating a healthy baby girl but end it in unfathomable despair. The rest of the film documents the ways their shared life goes wildly off the rails. Kirby is strong, capturing the prickliness of a woman for whom living has become an irritation, but her Oscar nomination is undoubtedly of the “suffer for your award” variety, based largely on that opening scene. (I’m sure the climactic courtroom speech didn’t hurt.) LaBeouf matches her, to be honest, bringing an exciting unpredictability to each moment and managing a compelling performance in a part that takes a number of jarring narrative turns (turns that unnervingly echo the real-life accusations of abuse that have been made against him). When Pieces of a Woman is at its best, it’s focusing on this traumatized couple and how neither knows how to make room for the other’s grieving process, partly because their respective processes conflict. Unfortunately the movie wants to be so much more, inflating the proceedings with loaded metaphorical imagery (bridges and apples do a lot of heavy lifting) and adding plot complications with extended family members that take us away from the film’s central, unsolvable, yet crucial question: how does one find meaning in the aftermath of senseless loss? Pieces of a Woman may explore that in ungainly ways, but there’s bravery in the effort.
