In 1972 Three Dog Night released their 8th album, Seven Separate Fools. On track four, side one of the LP was a soft, if bittersweet song, entitled Pieces of April. "April gave us springtime and the promise of flowers ... and the feeling that we both shared and the love that we called ours ... we had no time for sadness, that’s a road we each had crossed ..." It’s a bit pretty I know, but they tend to mumble their words a little which doesn’t hurt the song. Anyway, writer-director Peter Hedges heard the song in a record store and got right into it, (or it got right into him), and he knew it was right for his film. He doesn’t use the music or the lyrics, but keeps the title, calls his main character April, and uses her to evoke the song’s mood of nascent love re-emerging. April (Katie Holmes) lives in a poky, untidy New York apartment with her boyfriend. She’s a hip cool independent rebellious individualistic spirit who, (unsurprisingly), dislikes authority -- no prizes for guessing that she has problems with her parents. But beneath her exterior is a clearly-felt vulnerability. A sadness even. Although her brother and sister still live at home, April has moved out, or perhaps was kicked out, we’re never really certain. Her mother, ashamed and hurt by April’s drug use, shoplifiting, and unsuitable boyfriends has chosen to ignore her, and focuses on her other daughter whom she likes to think is ‘perfect’, the kind of daughter that every mother wishes for. In addition to this, April’s mother is dying of cancer, and the knowledge of this has caused a crack in April’s armour through which the love that she feels towards her mother and her family begins to seep. Still, it’s a love which is painful for her to admit -- she seems to be like a person groping about in the dark and afraid of falling.

In an attempt to cross the emotional chasm that separates her from her family, April has invited then to Thanksgiving dinner. When her oven breaks, she is forced to run from apartment to apartment begging for help. In the process she meets a comic array of people, many of whom are indifferent to her problems, some of whom aren’t. And through these encounters her fear of once again disappointing her family is replaced by an intense desire simply to see them again. Her family are as anxiety-ridden about the meeting as she is, and over the course of the film Hedges cuts back and forth between April’s anxieties and those of her family. During their day long drive to New York the family talk about April, her childhood, their memories of her, and they too realize that they have locked-up feelings for April that are stronger than they care to admit. The mother’s journey is an especially poignant one. Her family fuss over her though she treats them with a meanness and nastiness that seems to surprise even her. It is a meanness that wells-up out of a frustration and desperation about her condition, but as the they get closer to New York, her desire to turn back the clock and erase her illness, is replaced by a desire to look forward -- to put behind her the problems she remembers and to re-connect with her daughter while she still can.

Pieces of April was shot in 16 days, and accordingly, handheld digital cameras were employed. Most directors who go digital do so for financial or practical reasons -- some use the digital look to escape the glib sheen of Hollywood films. The press kit quotes Hedges as saying that most films released today are disconnected from real life. In contrast to this, he wants Pieces of April to tap into real life, real people, real emotions, real situations. He doesn’t want viewers to discuss the intricacies of the characters’ lives and relationships, or his photography and editing, his wants his film to be a jumping-off point for audiences to discuss their own lives. He wants to make room for an introspection that sets viewers questioning their own relationships, and makes them realize that their lives are ticking away, that their time is limited, that they could, at any moment, die, and their petty disputes will no longer matter. That’s a lot of talk about what he wants, and a lot of chanting centred on that sacred four-syllabled sound ‘reality’. He certainly doesn’t achieve all he sets out to. Nevertheless, Pieces of April is a film that tries to show that the most emotionally profound experiences occur when a person is together with others they love. And in its best scenes, it’s a film that successfully fuses life and love, even in their saddest moments.