pieces of a woman

As their story begins, pregnant Martha (Vanessa Kirby) is feted at an office baby shower, while her husband Sean (Shia LaBeouf), a construction engineer on a Charles River bridge project in Boston, is so eager to become a father that he frames the ultrasound photographs of their daughter to hang in the nursery.

Young love, a new marriage and the excitement of becoming parents for the first time implodes when a tragic accident occurs during the birthing process. Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf star in the new Netflix film Pieces of a Woman as Martha and Sean, the mismatched but charming couple who find themselves in an inexorable downward spiral after losing their baby.

“The first 30 minutes of [‘Pieces of a Woman’] contain some of the most intense footage you will see this year — quite possibly the most bloodcurdling images of [birth], in all its hideous brutality, you have ever seen.” That quote paraphrases the Washington Post’s review of Stephen Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan from 1998. But those words apply equally to the first 30 minutes of “Pieces of a Woman

The title Pieces of a Woman is a clue that reveals more than the filmmakers probably intended. That’s because the protagonist, Martha (a heartbreaking Vanessa Kirby), isn’t the only disjointed, fragmented one. So is the movie that tells her story. Director Kornel Mundruczo seems more interested in displaying symbol-alert imagery than in concentrating on the people in pieces.