Pieces Of April Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)October 10th, 2003
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Pieces of April is a film one can't help but love. It was shot in about two weeks for well under $200,000 before being scooped up for $3.5 million at Sundance earlier this year. It's sweet and heartbreakingly sad, has a great cast and clocks in at under 90 minutes. Pieces is also the exceedingly promising directorial debut of Peter Hedges, who won cool kids over with his adaptation of What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (his own novel) nearly a full decade before nabbing an Oscar nomination for last year's About a Boy.
Pieces has two separate storylines that approach each other like a pair of proverbial math class trains. Train A is a dumpy apartment on the Lower East Side which is home to 21-year-old punk princess April Burns (Katie Holmes, The Singing Detective) and her new boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke, Antwone Fisher). April, who is like a Bizarro World Joey Potter with tattoos, dyed hair and ratty clothes, struggles to wake up and get out of bed. It's Thanksgiving morning, and while the rest of her big-city pals are likely still catching ZZZs, April has to get up and prepare the Big Holiday Meal.
Trouble is, April doesn't know how to cook her way out of a paper bag (she makes a preparation list as she goes along, crossing out tasks as soon as she writes them down). This situation is compounded by a broken oven, a neat disappearing trick by Bobby, and a general resentment toward the family she will be hosting in a few hours. April is the oldest child, or "the first pancake," she painfully calls herself. She's better without her family, and they're better off without her. Still, that doesn't stop April from making a concerted effort to pull off a decent meal. This involves knocking on the doors of her neighbors for TRA (turkey roasting assistance), which is where we meet the catty Wayne (Sean Hayes) and the helpful yet skeptical Evette (Lillias White) and Eugene (Isiah Whitlock Jr.).
Train B, meanwhile, is hurtling toward Manhattan from suburban Pennsylvania in the form of a station wagon. Inside are April's family, and they're dysfunctional enough to make you think of Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays at least seven times. Mom (Patricia Clarkson) has cancer, and this is likely to be her last Thanksgiving. Whiny sister Beth (Alison Pill), who got an A in HomeEc, wonders why they have to drag sickly Mom to the ungrateful April's apartment when April can't even peel a potato. Pothead brother Timmy (John Gallagher Jr.) bickers with Beth when he isn't rolling pain-alleviating fatties for his mom. Dad (Oliver Platt) is excited to meet April's new boyfriend, because she said Bobby reminds her of him, while senile Grandma (Alice Drummond) assumed April died years ago.
Like School of Rock, Pieces isn't so much about telling a new story as it is about taking an old story and breathing some fresh air into it. Nobody will be surprised at how Pieces ends, but many will be happy at how it reaches its very Thanksgiving-y conclusion. The acting is strong across the board, with Holmes finally getting a chance to show some range and Clarkson netting a Sundance Special Jury Prize for her acting. Tami Reiker, who shot High Art and some of HBO's gorgeous Carnivāle, does a great job wielding her handheld digital video camera here, but I'm still not sure what to make of the thread involving Luke's character. Not only is it distractingly unnecessary (aside from filling out the already skeletal running time), but it also involves Sisqo, and that's just something I can't get behind.
1:21 - PG-13 for language, sensuality, drug content and images of nudity
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