Pieces of Her (2022)

At several levels this is not an easy film to watch. The idea that a young woman has lived her first 30 years in witness protection without knowing it does seem surprising, but her mother rarely talks about the past. Instead, an incident in a restaurant sparks off a chain reaction that totally shatters Andy’s “normal” life..

I was originally going to focus on Jane’s piano recitals as the musical “pieces of her”, but then I kept seeing images in the 8 episode Netflix show that gave me the visual clue: it’s a looking-glass world. Nothing is as it seems, period.

“Pieces of Her follows the story of Andy, a 30-year-old woman who is caught in a deadly mass shooting at a local diner. Moments later, she witnesses her mother, Laura, violently eliminate the threat with ease. As Andy begins to unravel her mother’s actions on that day, her perspective on their entire familial relationship takes a new turn. Soon, figures from her mother’s past reappear, and she is forced to escape. On the journey, she attempts to find the truth that her mother buried long ago.” (Wikipedia)

*Spoiler Alert*

At one point, I even thought that Grace, the assassin of Jane’s father, was actually Jane’s long-lost mother, but I was wrong. Essentially, it is impossible to know who Andy should trust. And she always felt that her uncle Jasper would be able to give her the answers she was seeking, but due to his own political ambitions, he was reluctant to tell her anything. It was his housekeeper who provided her with a ‘missing’ videotape of Jane’s interactions with Nick, a hint that Nick was her real father.

Watch at your own risk of finding this show mirrored in your dreams afterward.