'Pieces of April' has own gritty charm

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

PIECES OF APRIL (PG-13) Three-and-a-Half Stars (Good-to-Excellent) Peter Hedges' gritty comedy spotlights a Thanksgiving gathering by one particular dysfunctional family whose members have much more in common than they think. Katie Holmes and Patricia Clarkson co-star. United Artists, 80 minutes.

At opposite sides of what's become a vast chasm of misunderstanding is the mother (Patricia Clarkson) who has decided that her misfit daughter won't amount to anything. On the other is that daughter, April (Katie Holmes) who knows she's the family rebel but still decides to extend an olive branch in the form of a holiday turkey dinner she's hosting at her crowded Manhattan apartment.

For the first two thirds of the film, Mom and Dad (Oliver Platt) drive in from the suburbs, along with April's two disagreeable siblings. Along the way, they bicker and complain — and struggle to come up with one positive memory of their life with April before she left the nest. A tension floats about the car as well, because Mom is seriously ill with inoperable cancer, and the approaching dinner may be the last chance for this family to straighten out their dismal domestic dynamic.

Meanwhile, April frantically prepares a Thanksgiving dinner, despite never having gotten any further in the culinary science than opening a can of cranberry sauce. Imagine her dismay when a neighbor informs her: "Nobody likes cranberry sauce straight from the can."

April's boyfriend (Derek Luke, who played Antwone Fisher) is on the streets, getting last-minute supplies and picking up a sport coat from a used clothing store. It's safe to assume that one point of tension between April and her parents is Bobby's race (he's black); but that subtext is nicely understated.

The disasters mount for April when her apartment oven goes kerplunk. She's forced to run up and down the stairs of the multiple-story walk-up, looking for any neighbor willing to share oven space. "Pieces of April" has been shot in a gritty yet appealing low-budget manner that perfectly captures life in a crowded and boisterous New York apartment building. Director and writer Peter Hedges demonstrates a continuing affinity for the surface details and unspoken secrets within a dysfunctional family. (He wrote scripts for two fine family relationship films — "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" and "About a Boy.")

The performances are all first-rate, though Clarkson and Holmes are the most memorable, as befitting their functions as the family's polar opposites. The young Holmes ("Dawson's Creek"), in particular, graduates here from the mostly juvenile work that's marked her early career. This is a performance of spunk and gritty charm, the spicy secret in this entertaining Thanksgiving recipe.

Rated PG-13, profanity, nudity.