Novelist and screenwriter
Peter Hedges makes his directorial debut with the comedy drama Pieces of April. Family outcast April Burns (
Katie Holmes) lives in a beat-up apartment in New York's Lower East Side with her boyfriend, Bobby (
Derek Luke). In order to spend some time with her dying mother, Joy (
Patricia Clarkson), April invites her conservative suburban family to her place for a Thanksgiving feast. She discovers that her oven is broken the morning of the big day, so she goes around her tenement building trying to find a sympathetic neighbor with a working oven. Though she doesn't know them, neighbors Eugene (Isiah Whitlock) and Evette (Lillias White) offer the use of their oven, but only for an hour. While she frantically tries to complete the meal, the family drives in from Pennsylvania sharing less-than-pleasant opinions about April's lifestyle. Dad Jim (
Oliver Platt) tries to think positively, while daughter Beth (
Alison Pill) flaunts her good-girl status and son Timmy (John Gallagher Jr.) captures it all on film. Shot with digital video, Pieces of April is a project of the Independent Film Channel's InDigEnt production company. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide