#kornél mundruczó
As Monica Castillo correctly notices, “Pieces of a Woman” actually begins with a man. That itself is neither bad nor wrong. After all, the movie is about “a person’s ability to grieve or how they think grief is supposed to be handled” (reading film critics from Roger Ebert’s website continues to be my post-movie routine). Shia LaBeouf’s character, as a husband and a father, would naturally be a part of the grieving equation in real life. Still, the same way the protagonist’s mother doesn’t like him, I bet I speak for most of the audience when I say we don’t like him either. And this because the movie wastes time, space, and our sympathy for the piece itself, on a weak bridge-building analogy and clichés of his destructive behaviour through drugs, and oh surprise! some violence, and oh surprise! cheating. In the same fashion, it’s not a surprise that what I personally enjoyed the most about the movie only involves him in the deep background: the one-take shot of Martha going from one room to another in her mother’s home, taking hold of anything that falls under her hands, a glass in the kitchen, a vinyl record in the living room, half-listening to the conversation, trying not to be angry and annoyed. How do you resolve a shot like that, the only one that smelt of ‘real life’ to me? It eventually had to end, of course, but with a cut that felt like a slap in the face – a close-up of Martha about to engage in a dramatic fight with her mother after all. Close-ups are indeed great for portraying strong emotions, and here everything comes out directly: That is what YOU want! That is what YOU need! The 24-min birth scene was also shot as a single take, but I preferred this one because it left me thinking, and feeling: The resistance to the so-called negative emotions, if its build-up is so attentive to detail, how do you also untangle it naturally, even though the breakage is often quick and explosive?
Pieces of a Woman(2020)
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SUBLIME CINEMA #595 - WHITE GOD
One of Hungary’s best Cannes submissions - filled with images that stayed with me long after I saw it. Kornél Mundruczó‘s film is a gem, and Zsófia Psotta is special as Lili, her and Hagen - a stray dog - and their mutual protection of each other is the heart of the story.
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