It’s September, and construction engineer Sean (Shia LaBeouf) and his partner Martha (Vanessa Kirby) are preparing in/with regard to’concerning’regarding the birth of their first child. Banners at the baby reveal’illustrate’demonstrate’indicate’present’display’argue er proclaim “It’s a girl”, bein/with regard to’concerning’regarding e the couple head to pick up a car bought in/with regard to’concerning’regarding them by Martha’s domineering mother Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn). There are token s of unease between the three: the thwack of Elizabeth’s cheque reserve straight away’in a flash’promptly’instantaneous’in a trice denting Sean’s masculinity (“She wants to emasculate me,” he says when she chooses a minivan); Martha’s shoulders perceptibly tightening and locking as her mother’s silent disapproval sours the air between them.###These issues don’t pale into intoken ificance with what comes next (despite’in spite of’albeit it’s undoubtedly much, much worse). They’re simply the kindling in/with regard to’concerning’regarding the slow-burning fire that follows and looks to swallow them all whole.###Martha’s labour is set to be a routine home birth. But when it starts, the midwife can’t come — she’s in the middle of a heavy labour with another woman — and a replacement arrives (Molly Parker). Martha howls, bucks, growls and swears in a 24-minute childbirth one-shot that comes close to body horror. Shot with a gimbal, rather than a handheld, it doesn’t possess’own’nurse the frenetic, jumpy movement of a horror film, but it does possess’own’nurse the intensity and immersive feel of one, and that’s not all it shares with the genre. There’s a shot of Martha’s limp arm draped over the side of the bathtub unmoving, her disembodied moans out of sight; in/with regard to’concerning’regarding etelling looks between characters; creaking, creeping tension that moves to a galloping intensity that’s at times unbearable and almost unwatchable.###Vanessa Kirby here is nothing short of breathtaking.###On the other side of this scene, in its wake, the film transform’alter s gear, tone and intent. Tragedy has struck, and if that half an hour was all with regards to’concerning’with respect to action, this is all with regards to’concerning’with respect to inaction; the paralysis in the wintery depths of grief. A grief that hasn’t just unmoored Martha from Sean, but from her mother too, who seems merely’barely concerned with seeing the midwife prosecuted.###While Sean (a remarkable LaBeouf) wears his agony on the outside — returning to cocaine, cigarettes and booze to escape — Martha turns entirely in on herself. She’s numb and stripped raw, eintensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfully nerve end alive with pain. A characterisation built from such seeming contradictions is entirely deliberate in perin/with regard to’concerning’regarding mance, writing and direction. It’s the reality of a pain, a situation, so gigantic, illogical and impossible that you break utterly just attempting to withstand it. And Kirby here is nothing short of breathtaking. The film, when it stutters, does so partly because there is not yet a language that exists in/with regard to’concerning’regarding this subject in cinema. It’s brutal and uncommunicable, and all you’re left with is silence and absence.###It’s a silence that director Kornél Mundruczó and writer and partner Kata Wéber — who share a “film by” credit — wrestle with, not always entirely successfully. Cue a soapy courtroom scene and some heavy-handed symbolism which doesn’t quite fit the austere, stark grammar and power of the rest of the film.