Pieces of Her
Toni Collette is a performer whose eyes do much of the emotive heavy lifting. They alternated between despondency and elation when she played Muriel Heslop in Muriel’s Wedding and were essentially anguished for the duration of The Sixth Sense. The anguish is back in Netflix’s original series Pieces of Her, and the eyes have it.
Laura (Collette) is a therapist working in a Veteran’s Hospital in the seaside town of Belle Isle, Georgia. She’s recently recovered from an undetermined illness, which compelled her daughter Andy (Bella Heathcote) to move home. During an abrupt moment of violence during Andy’s birthday lunch, Laura faces off against an attacker with suspicious calmness, and her face is subsequently plastered all over the evening news. This new public profile makes Laura very jumpy indeed, and it seems like the ghosts of her past are about to visit, with undoubtedly malicious intentions.
Adapted from the 2018 novel by Karin Slaughter, Pieces of Her is quite the onslaught. The violence that serves as a catalyst for the narrative is borderline gratuitous, although this at least signposts the relative bluntness of the rest of the show. Belle Isle itself is actually played by various outer suburbs of Sydney, after the production had to relocate to the Covid-safe(ish) environment offered by Australia. There are a number of Aussie actors doing their very best American accents, mostly successfully.
Of course, Laura has secrets (it would be an uneventful show if she didn’t), but it’s alluded to that some type of huge and familiar conspiracy is coming together, which really gives the show the feeling of a Netflix unoriginal. It all whizzes along too quickly for the mother-daughter dynamic between Laura and Andy to make much of an impression at first, but this takes form in subsequent episodes as Andy begins to discover the various pieces of her mother. There’s definite potential, although the intended intensity of key moments almost crosses over into silliness at times. Pieces of Her won’t win any prizes for subtlety or plausibility, but it’s sufficiently gripping while being tolerably recognisable.
Oliver Johnston
Pieces of Her is released on Netflix on 4th March 2022.
Watch the trailer for Pieces of Her here:
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