Perfect Pie

This is a low budget woman's movie with a bad title. But that doesn't detract from the fact it is an extraordinarily sensitive and engrossing item. It is a simple story of female friendship, neatly knitted to-gether with well done flashbacks. It's a film anyone, male or female, rural or urban, can identify with, nicely shot, well performed and ably crafted with a definite Canadian accent and style.

Perfect Pie is a beautiful film about friendship. It weaves the past with the present and the stellar performances of the actresses make the trip through time seamless and enjoyable. Wendy Crewson's portrayal of Patsy is gentle and lovely while never allowing the audience to lose sight of the character's inner strength and determination. A "must see" movie for anyone who has ever had a best friend.

Francesca Prine, formerly Marie Beck (Barbara Williams) is a troubled famous opera singer. Her former best friend Patsy Willets (Wendy Crewson) invites her to sing in their hometown after thirty years of separation. In flashbacks, Marie (Alison Pill) and Patsy (Rachel McAdams) are the closest companions until Marie leaves an unconscious Patsy in the hospital permanently. They were ten when they first met.

This does become a waiting game. One is always waiting to go back to Alison Pill and future A-lister Rachel McAdams. Their time seems to be the important part of the movie and contains the big revelation. I don't mind the present day story, but it should be the wrap-around story of the movie. This is based on a play and I don't know anything about that. No matter what, this needs to change.

This is a film for women. It is a story about the reunion of two once childhood friends who have drifted apart after a terrible incident. Wendy Crewson is wonderful as the friend (Patsy)who didn't leave the small, hometown and became a housewife. Barbara Williams plays the friend (Francesca/Marie) who left and became a world famous opera singer only to return for a benefit concert on behalf of her estranged friend. Neither character was sympathetic and I could not connect with Marie. One of the problems was that the story was told in three different timelines: the present, the past around the time the incident occurred, and the past when the two friends first met. The editing was problematic. As soon as I was getting into the present storyline, the scene would jump into the past. This broke upset the pace and rhythm for me and when they did go to scenes in the past they never stayed long enough to flesh out the story. At least for me. I also found the ending to be anticlimatic and could have ended with the friends reconciling.

Some wonderful vignettes but all in all cohesion was missing. A pivotal scene - the very heart of the plot, so to speak, was handled almost dismissively, a real shame. Three time frames are in the movie and sometimes you just don't get quite enough before another time shift. A very mixed bag. Crewson and Williams play off each other beautifully as do their 15 year old selves played by Pill and MacAdams ( one scene of Patsy picking nits out of Marie's hair is particularly poignant). But most of all it played flatly, not enough meat in any scene to grab one and connect one with the characters. Some tightening of the editing and a longer key scene would have increased the horror and given the viewer more of a connection. And one major flaw was that Marie, a hopelessly neglected and filthy child of a down-and-out, alcoholic mother (she apparently does not bathe and smells) is remarkably clean and looks well cared for throughout. At the end the character of Francesca was still at a remove from her audience. 6 out of 10.