When Pieces of a Woman debuted at TIFF, it received rave reviews, especially for performances from Shia LaBeouf, Sarah Snook, Ellen Burstyn and especially lead Vanessa Kirby. Now, the rest of us get our first look at the film, which follows the agony of a woman who loses her baby in childbirth. It’s a bracingly common tragedy rarely committed to film, and Hungarian filmmaker Kornél Mundruczó deserves credit for being willing to plumb this horrible part of the human experience with tender courage.
Martha (Kirby) and Sean (LaBeouf) find their marriage strained to its breaking point in the aftermath of a home birth that goes tragically awry. As the couple struggle to cope with the loss of something they’d hoped would keep them together, past traumas of parental abuse and substance addiction surface to test their marriage.
The movie will be in a few theaters on December 30 before dropping on Netflix in January.