Although these supporting roles earned her critical acclaim and awards, Kirby did not want to find her first starring role on screen, she said. She played many complex characters on stage: women like Rosalind, the fiercely intelligent heroine of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” She held out a lead on screen in which she could feel Rosalind’s’ magic ‘,’ she said, ‘which’ performs’ like flying when you step on stage. ‘
“I could never find those roles on screen,” she said. So she waits and uses her smaller parts as opportunities to observe and learn, and asks Anthony Hopkins about his trade as they collaborate on the British TV drama “The Dresser”, watching how generously Rachel McAdams started for the film “About Time,” she said.
Given Kirby’s stage background, it’s fitting that ‘Pieces of a Woman’ began life as a play, written by Kata Weber, Mundruczo’s partner, using the couple’s own experience of losing a child. The play “Pieces of a Woman”, which takes place in Poland, consists of only two scenes: the birth and an explosive meal with Martha’s family that takes place about halfway through the processing of the film. The 2018 premiere, directed by Mundruczo at the TR Warszawa Theater in Warsaw, was a hit, and production is still in the company’s repertoire.
Around the time Mundruczo turned 40, five years ago, he wanted a larger audience for his work, he said, and so he switched from German, Hungarian and Polish; “Pieces of a Woman” is his first English-language film. By adapting the play for the big screen, Mundruczo staged it in Boston, he said, because he felt that the Irish Catholic culture of the city reflected the conservative social landscape of Poland.
The loss of a pregnancy is rarely reflected in the entertainment on screen. Mundruczo said he hopes looking at Martha’s experiences will “encourage people to be brave enough to have their own answer to any loss,” he said.