A Thanksgiving ideal for some Americans could be a beautifully lit and roaringly warm room, vibrantly dressed in the colours of the season. Perhaps a room full of family and friends eating the finest, hearty foods, toasting what they’re all thankful for.
Director Peter Hedges has captured the hellish opposite of that ideal in Pieces Of April. The film follows two stories running in tandem. April Burns (Katie Holmes) is in a dingy yet simplistically dramatic race against time to prepare Thanksgiving dinner. Who for? Her frustratingly dysfunctional family who are travelling from Pennsylvania to New York for the occasion.
With her stove broken, April’s race is more problematic than it needs to be. She knocks on door after door in her dirty, graffiti-covered apartment block meeting helpful and unhelpful characters in need of assistance in cooking the turkey. Her boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke) has a problem of his own; he needs to find a suit for the celebratory dinner.
The Burns family’s relationship is strained. The journey sees a family estate car full to capacity; mother, father, brother, sister and grandmother are crammed in, recollecting an oh-so-real and relatable memory for many. Mother Joy (Patricia Clarkson) has breast cancer. Her story is told through her short temper, snappy comebacks and brutal honesty. It’s heartbreaking.
The dialogue throughout the movie can appear stale and boring. The conversations lack drama and are simply literal. It would be difficult to expect anything else in a story so undramatic, but it makes the film stagnant in places. The stagnation is broken only once and it comes from the most unlikely of characters. Setting up what appears to be a heartfelt conversation about what her family will do after her passing, she dryly asks how each of them will “discard food without our hostess knowing”. It’s such an unexpected piece of irony that it puts some fire in the belly of the film, almost putting fire back in April’s stove itself.
The film is strikingly low-budget, and deliberately so. Each scene is captured in the style of an of-the-era home video. Watching on is like looking at family snapshots of a bygone era. It’s agonising in the early stages to have a lack of colour and steadiness but its cheapness soon becomes endearing as emotions of sympathy for the family’s plight take over.
Pieces Of April is a beautifully humanising look at the complexities of family life and a reminder of what can bind us together and what can tear us apart.
[…] First published on Cult Following […]