Vanessa Kirby, known for her role as the young Princess Margaret in "The Crown", starred in a movie "Fragments of a Woman", which was launched on Netflix on January 7. Last September, Kirby won the honor of best actress at the 77th Venice Film Festival for this film.
The movie is about a professional woman, Martha Weiss, who gave birth to a child in her home with the help of her husband and midwife. However, the baby suffered a cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead. As a result, Martha Weiss and her family had to deal with the painful facts about the bereavement in their future lives. The film's screenwriter Kata Wéber and director Kornél Mundruczó are a couple, and the film is created based on their true child-bereavement experience. Wéber said in an interview that writing itself is a kind of healing, through which you begin to understand your emotions.
The most touching thing in the movie is a delivery scene that lasts more than 20 minutes. There is no editing in it, and the continuous time and simulation scene are directly presented, which makes people witness the suffering of Martha Weiss during childbirth. The physical ordeal arrived, watching her feeble body passively change its posture, listening to her intermittent gasping, groaning and retching, while her husband and midwife comforted patiently while frantically.
When talking about preparations for the performance, Vanessa Kirby said that she watched a lot of videos on the Internet at first, but she was anxious and dissatisfied with these fertility clips, and was very worried about playing the role, so she went through miscarriage one after another. Women and midwives in the hospital talked. While investigating the character, she happened to meet a pregnant woman who was having contractions, so she fully witnessed the six-hour labor process in the hospital. Every second of it made Kirby feel that she was in person. Experience.
In the movie, Kirby's acting is rational and restrained. Martha, who she plays, is both a gentle mother and a strong daughter. On the one hand, she can only seek compensation for the loss in the fragments of life—collecting apple seeds and nurturing them into sprouts; on the other hand, she must break free from the miserable eyes of family and friends, so she restrains herself. Emotions, without revealing any pain, and at the most critical moment of the trial, she declared her emotional position-she gave up asking for financial compensation and scientific explanations about sudden infant death and chose to bear the pain of losing her son alone.
The atmosphere of the film is cold and sad, and the emotions of the characters appear soft and delicate. The film critic ANTHONY LANE of "The New Yorker" compares it with Bergman's "Autumn Sonata" (1978). "Women's Fragment" is a healing process, but it is not so much about the healing and relief of emotions, it is more about an immersive mood experience-a short-term extraction of life. Li and the slowness and difficulty of soul salvation itself.
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