Pieces Of A Woman Review: 7 Ups & 3 Downs

Downs...

3. The Uneven Pacing

Audiences are likely to be glued to their screens for the first 40-or-so minutes of this movie, in which the central home birth is depicted through a seamlessly unbroken take.

But after that, Kornél Mundruczó's (White God) film loses a good deal of its urgency, with some of the drama that follows verging on outright meandering.

At 126 minutes in length, there are numerous scenes which feel too drawn-out for their own good, especially considering the fair simplicity of the central narrative.

Though it would be a misstep to race through such emotionally fraught material, at the same time the film never quite recaptures the energy of its first act, with the remaining 80-or-so minutes feeling quite over-extended.

That's not to say the film ever gets boring or especially patience-testing, but that some shrewder editing would've created an even more engrossing and dramatically cohesive end product.