Toni Collette’s back-catalog of memorable mothers continues to grow. She’s played maternal figures who are tender (“The Sixth Sense”), terrifying (“Hereditary”), and complicated (“The United States of Tara”). Now, in Netflix’s new series “Pieces of Her,” Collette is a deeply enigmatic mom whose checkered past makes up the brunt of the twisty thriller’s action.
“Pieces of Her” opens strong. Laura (Collette) lives in a small town with her daughter, Andy (Bella Heathcote). Andy is on the brink of turning 30 and feels mildly aimless after moving home from New York City to care for her mother after a cancer diagnosis. She gets propelled into a search for meaning, though, after a harrowing incident sets off a chain of surprises.
Some of the best moments in “Pieces of Her” are also the series’ most violent. The show is filmed with a sense of grounded realism by director Minkie Spiro (“The Plot Against America”), which makes its forays into action feel all the more impactful. In the show’s first episode, Laura and Andy are targeted by a gunman in a local restaurant. It’s an upsetting sequence, but one that becomes puzzling when Laura leaps into action to defend her daughter, apparently possessing some half-remembered killer instinct.
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Who is Laura, really? This is the show’s central question, and for a few engrossing episodes, the answer seems wholly unguessable. “Pieces of Her” throws so many twists at its audiences that we’re bound to get caught unaware by a few. The show is at its best when it’s several steps ahead of its audience; it’s thrilling to genuinely have no clue what’s going to happen next. The series’ best mysteries will leave even the most theory-happy viewers at a loss about Laura’s history.
Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case with “Pieces of Her.” By the back half of the season, audiences will likely be ahead of the characters–especially Andy, an unprepared hero who makes the wrong decision in nearly every situation. As the season’s final episodes unfold, it tediously shakes out a few more secrets and twists like the last Tic-Tacs in a container, not worth the effort of reaching so hard for.
“Pieces of Her” is based on a popular novel by Karin Slaughter, a prolific crime writer who has cranked out over 20 novels to date. This one is ripe for adaptation; when the central conceit is finally explained, it’s a juicy story chock-full of romance, political intrigue, and family tragedy. It also bears more than a passing resemblance to a few real-life headlines. Flashbacks to the ’80s reveal a talented secondary cast of characters, including “The End of the F***ing World” actress Jessica Barden as a tortured young piano player. Barden’s scenes hit the hardest of any in the series, although her plot on screen is at times more ambiguous than the version laid out in Slaughter’s source material.
Barden is joined in the show’s secondary timeline by “Lost” star Terry O’Quinn and “Game of Thrones” actor Joe Dempsie, both playing men with strong coercive power. For all the time the series spends combing through the archives of Laura’s life, it never fully utilizes either of these actors. Their characters lurk around the edges of her memories and ultimately take them over completely, but their insidiousness is mostly subtle by design, revealed only in bite-sized pieces.
This brings us to the biggest flaw in “Pieces of Her,” which is by and large a compelling thriller anchored by Collette and Barden. The series doles out its surprises and details about Laura’s past so regularly that you could set your clock to them. Even at eight episodes, it feels compressed, as if Slaughter’s book is being crammed into a narrower timeline than its plot would allow. Scenes also often run long, trying to make us feel something by focusing on a subject long after the moment’s emotional expiration date has passed. The overall effect of both problems is that “Pieces of Her” doesn’t always spend its time well.
More frustratingly, the series is at times inattentive to its viewers, seeming not to care whether we grasp its details or not. The dual-timeline cast is sprawling, and even the non-mysterious relationships aren’t clearly explained early on, making every interaction going forward a chance to mix up characters. Gasp-worthy moments fail to materialize when they hinge entirely on characters whose names we’ve barely learned. In its bid to remain shocking, the show sometimes gets muddled.
Still, “Pieces of Her” delivers better entertainment than the average Netflix drop. Collette is a powerhouse, and her best bits are often the subtlest ones, as when Laura tries to shake away a lingering memory. When the show’s twists do manage to hit the mark, its revealing moments are searing and memorable. The show is also aptly cast: while Dempsie’s character is all dark-eyed charm and O’Quinn’s is at once haughty and dangerous, other actors play more inscrutable figures from Laura’s past. Calum Worthy, so memorable from “American Vandal,” plays a rich kid with a knack for politics. “Yellowstone” actor Gil Birmingham, who’s always a welcome addition to any cast, plays an old friend of Laura’s who fulfills the show’s apparent prerequisite of being more mysterious than he first appears.
Laura’s origin story unfolds against a backdrop of inflammatory politics, but the show doesn’t seem to be about the ideologies its characters espouse. In the end, it’s about the choices we make as kids and parents, all of which can help or hurt the people we love. There’s a direct throughline of trauma between directionless Andy, unknowable Laura, and her own parents. Much of it has to do with keeping control; other people controlled Laura, so she now works overtime to control her own memories, and the information her daughter has access to. In that sense, it’s a sadly common story told through the dramatic lens of a thriller.
“Pieces of Her” isn’t perfect–it feels at once overstuffed and truncated–but it’s undeniably compelling television thanks to its strong cast and endless cache of surprises. [B-]