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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 Carnivàle, 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
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for
language, sensuality, drug content and images of nudity |
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