Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Directed by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg

(R)

***

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In this fascinating, no-holds-barred documentary, Joan Rivers finally gets her close-up, and “you can’t say she hasn’t earned it,” said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. The 77-year-old comedian might be the hardest-working woman in show business. Directors Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg follow Rivers for an entire year, from the London stage of her one-woman play to a “heckler-plagued” gig in northern Wisconsin. The results aren’t always pretty, but, with Rivers, what you see is what you get, said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. Rivers’ “relentless pursuit” of fame, money, and attention has caused her onstage and offstage personas to become one. Such single-mindedness, however, has cost the comic a lot over the years. She fell out with mentor Johnny Carson. Her husband committed suicide in despair over her career struggles. Revealing Rivers as she is, scars and all, A Piece of Work operates at the “tricky intersection of comedy and tragedy,” said Nathan Rabin in The A.V. Club. It’s a “funny, heartbreaking, and casually profound” portrait of a woman who’s nothing if not “a consummate survivor.”