Pieces of April (2003)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Peter Hedges

Cinematographer: Tami Reiker

Composer: Stephin Merritt

Cast: Katie Holmes, Patricia Clarkson, Oliver Platt, Derek Luke, Alison Pill, John Gallagher Jr., Lillias White, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Sean Hayes

April, the black sheep of the family, now living in a rundown area of New York, is busily preparing dinner for her soon-to-arrive parents and siblings when she realises that her oven isn’t working, leaving her to search desperately amongst her neighbours for a spare one to use, hoping to make what may be her mother’s final Thanksgiving (she is suffering from cancer) perfect, despite the fact that they have never got on together, in Hedges’s gentle, affecting, and (despite its somewhat hokey premise) generally quite delightful comedy-drama – some of the humour misses a little, though. Iain.Stott