Pieces of April

REVIEW
April Burns is having a hard time pulling herself up from the mattress on the floor of her East Village apartment. It’s Thanksgiving Day, and she’s invited her estranged, quintessentially suburban family to dinner. The family is as reticent as she, but all trudge inexorably to the expected seasonal horror of making small talk while eating way too much food with people you avoid the rest of the year. As the film bounces between April’s adventures in cooking and the Burns family road trip, random, painful memories reemerge on both sides of the lifestyle divide, dropping clues to the family dynamics — whether the family of birth or the family of choice. Making a skillful directorial debut, writer Hedges (What's Eating Gilbert Grape?) juxtaposes wildly divergent moods, careening between laugh-out-loud comedy and solemn pathos with the unexpected quickness found during actual family dinners. But he couldn’t do it without the remarkable cast, all of whom are fearless in their emotional exposure and accomplished in the execution of their character portrayals. This is, of course, expected from trusted veterans Clarkson and Platt; but Holmes as April brings an intelligent complexity to her role which belies her youth, and the entire cast delivers authenticity and presence to the smallest role. Hedges’ remarkable control of the medium and the energetic flow of the film, the ensemble’s dead-on-target and often improvisational performances, a maximum use of location and a refreshingly quick-witted script coalesce into an entertainment with surprising emotional impact.