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Pieces of a Woman(2020)

R
2h 6m
- Drama

Release Date: Dec 30, 2020

When a young mother's home birth ends in unfathomable tragedy, she begins a year-long odyssey of mourning that fractures relationships with loved ones in this deeply personal story of a woman learning to live alongside her loss.

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Director & Top Cast

Kornél Mundruczó
Director

Vanessa Kirby
Martha

Shia LaBeouf
Sean

Ellen Burstyn
Elizabeth

Iliza Shlesinger
Anita

Benny Safdie
Chris

Sarah Snook

Suzanne

Molly Parker

Eva

Steven McCarthy

Photographer

Tyrone Benskin

Judge

Frank Schorpion

Lane

Harry Standjofski

Court Clerk

Domenic Di Rosa

Medical Examiner

Jimmie Fails

Max

Juliette Casagrande

Little Girl

Gayle Garfinkle

Judith

Vanessa Smythe

Linda

Nick Walker

Peter

Technical Specifications

Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Other Details

Country of Origin: Canada,Hungary,United States

Language: English

Showtimes

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(U.S. Only)

Summaries

Plot Summary

Martha Weiss and Sean Carson are a Boston couple who are on the verge of becoming parents. Sean is a construction worker, while Martha is an executive. The couple meet up at a car dealership where Martha's brother-in-law, Chris, works and Martha's mother, Elizabeth, has bought them a minivan. Sean gifts Martha ultrasound pictures to hang in their nursery. Martha goes into labor that night. Sean calls their midwife, Barbara, but she is unavailable, so she sends a woman named Eva in her place. Martha struggles with nausea, anxiety, and pain during labor.When Martha reaches ten centimeters, the midwife moves her into the bedroom in order to give birth. As Martha pushes, Eva realizes the baby's heart rate is dropping dangerously low during contractions. She informs a panicked Sean that they may need to go to the hospital and moves to call paramedics. Sean relays this information to Martha, who insists that she doesn't want to go, as she is so close. Martha channels all of her strength to push the baby out and gives birth to her daughter. Eva notices the baby is turning blue and attempts to revive her, but she quickly goes into cardiac arrest, and dies.The next month while shopping, Martha encounters a little girl and lactates through her shirt. At a grocery store, she encounters a friend of her mother's, Judith, who hugs her and assures her that Eva will "rot in prison". Sean and Martha attend an appointment with a coroner. Sean is eager to find out what went wrong, while Martha is reluctant. At the coroner's, the couple learns that they have not established the cause of death, though they were able to determine that the baby was in a low-oxygen environment and have started proceedings against Eva. Sean leaves, overcome with emotion, while Martha remains and decides that she wants to donate the baby's body to science.Martha's relationship with Sean continues to struggle as well as with her mother who wants to bury the baby and have a funeral. Two months later she is still deeply depressed. Sean and Martha fight over the baby's room. Sean wants it maintained and Martha does not. Sean attempts to instigate sex but it does not work out and it becomes clear that he is also still deeply depressed.The next month, Sean returns the minivan. He starts to have an affair with Martha's cousin, Suzanne, and use cocaine after being sober for over six years. Suzanne informs him that a potential lawsuit against Eva could be very lucrative. Suzanne is also the attorney prosecuting Eva.Elizabeth blames Martha for the baby's death because she decided to have a home birth and tells her she has to attend Eva's trial. Elizabeth then tells Sean she never liked him. She offers him money to leave and never return. Martha drops Sean off at the airport and he leaves for Seattle.Months later, Martha testifies at Eva's trial. Afterwards, she picks up pictures of her holding her daughter and goes back to the trial. The judge allows her to address the court, in which she states that Eva is not at fault for the death and she does not blame her. Back home, she discovers that apple seeds she started in her refrigerator have started to sprout. A month later Martha scatters her daughter's ashes into the river. Years later, a little girl climbs an apple tree. Martha helps her down and the two go inside.

Storyline

Martha and Sean are a Boston couple on the verge of parenthood whose lives change irrevocably when a home birth ends in unimaginable tragedy. Thus begins a yearlong odyssey for Martha, who must navigate her grief while working through fractious relationships with her husband and her domineering mother, along with the publicly vilified midwife, whom she must face in court. A deeply personal, searing, and ultimately transcendent story of a woman learning to live alongside her loss. — Netflix With their first baby due any minute, rough-around-the-edges builder, Sean, and his young wife, Martha, are on cloud nine. Instead, after a domestic white-knuckle ordeal, tragedy strikes. And in the following months, Martha and Sean will experience an insidious roller coaster of corrosive emotions, utterly defenceless to grapple with loss. More and more, as alienation, strained family relationships, and the pressing need for answers and closure start to define their lives, once-blissful Sean and Martha find themselves caught in a self-destructive spiral. Can time heal all wounds? — Nick Riganas