Pieces of April
2/4
Starring: Katie Holmes, Patricia Clarkson, Oliver Platt, Derek Luke, Alison Pill
Rated PG-13 for Language, Sensuality, Drug Content and Images of Nudity
"Pieces of April" is a visually dazzling but shallow dramedy. It has all the earmarks of something that Miramax would have bought in its heyday: quirky-but-everyday people, perfect mis-en-scene, gritty cinematography, natrualist plot, and so on. The problem here is that the characters, while well-acted across the board, are thinly developed which makes the minimalist plot of everyday goings on plodding rather than engaging.
April (Holmes) is a worldly hipster living in a rundown apartment in New York City. She has invited her family to come celebrate Thanksgiving with her in her apartment, but her relationship with them is so strained that she only half believes that they will actually show up. But she's struggling to pull it all together (she's never cooked before) when disaster strikes: her oven breaks, and the landlord is unavailable. She must race up and down the building looking for a spare oven. Meanwhile, her family is grudgingly making the trip to New York City. April's past behavior and drug use has left scars, and her mother Joy (Clarkson) is dying of cancer.
The performances are fine. Katie Holmes, known mainly for her role as Joey Pottter on "Dawson's Creek" and being Mrs. Tom Cruise, is a good actress. She's a hipster alright, but despite her terrible relationship with her family, she hasn't turned into an vicious emotional sadist like Enid in "Ghost World" (a movie that iMDb has said is similar to this film...which is not true). Holmes gives the best performance in the film, probably because April is the best developed. Patricia Clarkson is good as the miserable and guilt-ridden Joy, and while she was honored with a long overdue Oscar nomination for the role, this is not her best work. She's not given enough material to work with. Oliver Platt is good as April's long-suffering father Jim and Alison Pill is okay as April's "perfect sister" Beth.
Novelist/screenwriter Peter Hedges makes his directorial debut here, and two things are immediately clear: he knows what he's doing with a camera and his writing abilities are best left to book adaptations. The script is half-baked; I constantly felt as if half the development was missing. Watching "Pieces of April" is like only seeing the main scenes of a movie; all the scenes that allow the film to delve deeper into the characters are missing.
Hedges is going for the documentary-approach of movies like "Cloverfield" and "The Blair Witch Project," where the immediacy of the medium makes up for the lack of three-dimensional characters. We didn't need to know the backstories or the subtle character traits of the characters in those movies because they came across as real people. The characters in "Pieces of April," for all their oddities, are real, but the script is lacking. The dialogue and the way that Hedges presents the story leave a hole that the other two movies that I mentioned were able to plug with the way that it was filmed.
It's a shame really. This had the potential to be something great. At least Hedges doesn't go overboard and make April a monster like Enid. I was thankful for that.
Starring: Katie Holmes, Patricia Clarkson, Oliver Platt, Derek Luke, Alison Pill
Rated PG-13 for Language, Sensuality, Drug Content and Images of Nudity
"Pieces of April" is a visually dazzling but shallow dramedy. It has all the earmarks of something that Miramax would have bought in its heyday: quirky-but-everyday people, perfect mis-en-scene, gritty cinematography, natrualist plot, and so on. The problem here is that the characters, while well-acted across the board, are thinly developed which makes the minimalist plot of everyday goings on plodding rather than engaging.
April (Holmes) is a worldly hipster living in a rundown apartment in New York City. She has invited her family to come celebrate Thanksgiving with her in her apartment, but her relationship with them is so strained that she only half believes that they will actually show up. But she's struggling to pull it all together (she's never cooked before) when disaster strikes: her oven breaks, and the landlord is unavailable. She must race up and down the building looking for a spare oven. Meanwhile, her family is grudgingly making the trip to New York City. April's past behavior and drug use has left scars, and her mother Joy (Clarkson) is dying of cancer.
The performances are fine. Katie Holmes, known mainly for her role as Joey Pottter on "Dawson's Creek" and being Mrs. Tom Cruise, is a good actress. She's a hipster alright, but despite her terrible relationship with her family, she hasn't turned into an vicious emotional sadist like Enid in "Ghost World" (a movie that iMDb has said is similar to this film...which is not true). Holmes gives the best performance in the film, probably because April is the best developed. Patricia Clarkson is good as the miserable and guilt-ridden Joy, and while she was honored with a long overdue Oscar nomination for the role, this is not her best work. She's not given enough material to work with. Oliver Platt is good as April's long-suffering father Jim and Alison Pill is okay as April's "perfect sister" Beth.
Novelist/screenwriter Peter Hedges makes his directorial debut here, and two things are immediately clear: he knows what he's doing with a camera and his writing abilities are best left to book adaptations. The script is half-baked; I constantly felt as if half the development was missing. Watching "Pieces of April" is like only seeing the main scenes of a movie; all the scenes that allow the film to delve deeper into the characters are missing.
Hedges is going for the documentary-approach of movies like "Cloverfield" and "The Blair Witch Project," where the immediacy of the medium makes up for the lack of three-dimensional characters. We didn't need to know the backstories or the subtle character traits of the characters in those movies because they came across as real people. The characters in "Pieces of April," for all their oddities, are real, but the script is lacking. The dialogue and the way that Hedges presents the story leave a hole that the other two movies that I mentioned were able to plug with the way that it was filmed.
It's a shame really. This had the potential to be something great. At least Hedges doesn't go overboard and make April a monster like Enid. I was thankful for that.
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